Root caries is a widespread dental problem.
In vitro root caries models are important tools in preliminary testing of dental products prior to expensive clinical trials. Previous studies in our laboratory have demonstrated that confocal laser scanning microscopy (CLSM) is useful to measure root dentin mineral changes. However, the reproducibility of this technique is unknown.
Objectives: To determine the intra- and inter-examiner reproducibility for the measurement of root lesion fluorescence parameters using CLSM.
Methods:Blocks of human root dentin from a previous
in vitro study on the effect of different treatment regimens on lesion initiation and progression were used. Following analysis of all specimens of the previous study, 29 sections were chosen to represent a range of lesion severity. Four images from each specimen were taken and analyzed by three examiners (M.J.T, A.H, K.Y), independently and then re-taken and re-analyzed 24 h later. The lesion parameters analyzed were: area, total fluorescence and depth. Intraclass Correlation Coefficients (ICCs)were used to assess the intra- and inter-examiner agreement.
Results:ICCs for all the parameters showed very good agreement within examiners (0.72-0.96) and between examiners (0.79-0.91).
Conclusions: The results of this study showed the CLSM method has an overall good reproducibility. However, extensive training and calibration are required to further standardize the procedure.