Optical coherence tomography (OCT) is a non-destructive, non-invasive diagnostic method that uses near-infrared light, which is considered to be harmless to the human body. An OCT system includes an interferometer that illuminates light and a photodetector that detects the backscattered light obtained from inside a subject to obtain precise tomographic images of tissue.
OCT has recently been used in dental-plaque studies to measure plaque thickness and morphology.
Reports on OCT observation of biofilms: Xi C. et al. used OCT for high-resolution real-time imaging of the three-dimensional structure and development of
Pseudomonas aeruginosa biofilms in a standard flow cell model and obtained useful biofilm imaging data. Thanks to its imaging capabilities and biofilm imaging data obtained, OCT has the potential for non-invasive, real-time,
in situ or
in vivo imaging for biofilm characterization.
Haisch C. et al. demonstrated the capability of OCT to monitor biofilm structure and its detachment behavior. Spatial resolution, 3D image quality and time-resolved profiling of biofilms were also demonstrated. The results suggest that OCT could be developed into a standard tool for monitoring biofilm density.
Using oral bacterial microcosms collected directly from plaque on the tooth-restoration interface of pediatric subjects, Chen R. et al. used cross-polarization optical coherence tomography (CP-OCT) as a means of quantifying biofilm, using aggregate scattering intensity or integrated scattering intensity, and reported that CP-OCT can quantify biofilm mass by measuring depth-resolved scattering across the entire biofilm.
Hou J. et al. developed a rescaling method that effectively eliminates the effects of autoscaling between different images and can quantitatively correlate the volumetric bacterial density and biofilm signal intensity in OCT images. Thereby, they developed a method to analyze and quantitatively compare the intensity distribution in OCT images of different biofilms, and thus derive the biofilm structure and volumetric bacterial density.
In the present study, the authors focused on the non-destructive and non-invasive nature of OCT to obtain precise tomographic images, observed biofilms formed by
S. mutans in vitro by OCT, and estimated the amount of insoluble glucan and bacterial density.
Biofilms were inspected on OCT images taken at two stages; the average optical thickness of the biofilm was less than 0.15mm at the early stage of formation, but exceeded 0.4mm in less than one day. Images taken by SS-OCT demonstrated that it was possible to observe considerably well from the inside to the base of the thick
S. mutans biofilm that formed in less than one day.
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