Estimation of Material Properties Based on Vibration for Tooth Drilling

Abstract

In Japan, many people have treated/untreated carious teeth. The carious treatment often requires long time including time to visit. On the other hand, the drilling operation for the treatment requires very high accuracy despite the freehand work by a dentist. If the operation could be automated, short-time treatment and high accuracy drilling could be realized. However, it is difficult to diagnose how much the caries should be removed. Its diagnosis depends on the dentist's experience or sense. To solve this problem, we have focused on the vibration induced by drilling. The vibration commonly relates to properties of the material. In this paper, we have confirmed its relation by the measurement and also confirmed that cause of drilling vibration is the elastic wave. Based on this fact, we have indicated the possibility to estimate the properties of a material under drilling and shown the effectiveness of determination based on drilling vibration by the experiment.