2025-03-28 タフツ大学
A user can slide the thin, flat tip of the CaviSense toothpick between teeth or anywhere else they are concerned cavities might be developing. Photo: Alonso Nichols
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「安価で使いやすく、非常に視覚的です。自分の目で確認できる客観的なツールを喜ぶ患者もいます。」ギリ・ナヴェ、歯科矯正学および生体医工学准教授
It’s cheap and it’s easy to use and it’s very visual. Some patients appreciate an objective tool that they can see with their own eyes.
Gili Naveh, associate professor of orthodontics and biomedical engineering
Naveh started designing the CaviSense toothpick in her lab, and helped found a startup to bring it to market last year. She and her colleagues at CaviSense, Inc. have been working with pediatric dental practices to add CaviSense to their workflow and ensure that it is useful. The toothpicks are also available for people to use at home, along with an app to help users record and interpret their results. People can purchase five toothpicks for $25 on the CaviSense website.
The CaviSense toothpicks are primarily intended for detecting cavities between teeth, but Naveh and her colleagues know that some parents would like to be able to check every tooth surface at home (which would require a lot of toothpicks). She and her colleagues are in the process of designing an even simpler at-home test, using a fillable tray that a patient would bite into to test all tooth surfaces at the same time. The filler material has the same color-changing properties as the CaviSense toothpick, so any trouble spots will turn yellow in the imprint.
The researchers are currently in the last stages of making prototypes and intend to start getting feedback from dentists soon. They hope to have this new cavity tester available to consumers by the middle of 2025.
“We can enable people to test whether they have cavities from home, and then get to the dentist in time to stop cavities and even heal the tooth,” Naveh said. “Everybody will be happier—kids, parents, and even dentists because they’ll be able to provide quicker, better treatments to help more patients.”
