Most dentists still rely on the X-ray as their main purpose for detecting decay and other oral diseases. Lantis Laser (Pink Sheets: LLSR) has been working on dental imaging technology it can market to 140,000 dentists in 100,000 offices in the United States, which would expand the resolution current X-ray systems display.The current technology is insufficient because the resolution of the X-ray is not high enough for early detection of most oral diseases.
LLSR has created the Optical Coherence Tomography (OTC) Dental Imaging System in hopes of advancing technology so that dentists can treat the patient before the decay becomes worse. This could mean less trauma for the patient, lower cost, less time spent in the chair, and an overall higher standard of patient care.
Stan Baron, president and CEO of Lantis, said the company could have had a product out sooner, but needed to wait for the technology to grow so the product would become more cost-effective.
“Earlier OCT research systems were of a very high cost, and this did not meet Lantis’ price objectives that would allow almost every dentist to afford a system to use chair side,” Baron explained in a press release. “As technology has advanced, Lantis has been able to commercialize this cutting-edge technology by producing a cost effective OCT system, putting us in a position to achieve a greater market penetration.”
Last week, in a company press release, Lantis exposed five characteristics of the OCT that will make it ideal for dental imaging.
The first characteristic is the high resolution of the imaging system, which is expected to be 4 to 20 um compared with 50 microns for dental X-ray and 110 um for high frequency ultrasound.
Secondly is the tissue characterization. By using information inherent to the returning photon signals, OTC can perform both spectroscopic and polarization imaging to better characterize tissue and lesions.
Its small size is another positive factor of the OTC system. The fiber-based design allows for easy integration and easy access to all surfaces of the teeth and mouth. And this is done with a scanner about the size of a small pen.
The fourth characteristic has to do with the health of the patient. The light-based frequency of light is safe for biological tissue.
Finally, the company pointed out that the image captured chair-side will provide a display on a computer monitor that is real-time. This image can be stored in the patients file or transferred to another monitor digitally.