title: Resolution characteristics of optical coherence tomography for dental use.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  The purpose of this study was to clarify the resolution characteristics of optical coherence tomography (OCT) for dental use.
  
  
  METHODS
  Two types of swept-source optical coherence tomography machines were employed in this study. To clarify their resolution characteristics, we newly developed a glass chart device with a ladder pattern of wavelengths, which ranged from 4 × 2 μm to 1024 × 2 μm, as well as a star-target pattern, a grid pattern and a spatial frequency response pattern. The resolving powers and characteristics of the OCTs were subjectively evaluated.
  
  
  RESULTS
  The Santec OCT-2000™(Santec Co., Komaki, Japan) had a resolving power of 64 μm in both the horizontal X and vertical Y directions, while the OCT from Yoshida had a resolving power of 64 μm in the horizontal X direction and 128 µm in the vertical Y direction. The resolving power of the depth Z direction could not be obtained from this study. With the Yoshida OCT, the star-target pattern seemed to be non-symmetrical, owing to an edge enhancement effect, which was revealed when the ladder patterns were placed in a horizontal direction.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  This study successfully clarified the resolution characteristics of two types of OCTs. The obtained data may be useful for diagnostic purposes, and the glass chart device used in this study may be useful for OCT quality assurance programmes.
authors.affiliation: 1 Department of Oral and Maxillofacial Radiology, Graduate School, Tokyo Medical and Dental University, Tokyo, Japan.
authors.forename: Hiroshi
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Watanabe
authors.affiliation: 1 Department of Oral and Maxillofacial Radiology, Graduate School, Tokyo Medical and Dental University, Tokyo, Japan.
authors.forename: Ami
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Kuribayashi
authors.affiliation: 2 National Center of Advanced Medicine for Dental and Oral Diseases, National Center for Geriatrics and Gerontology, Obu, Japan.
authors.forename: Yasunori
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Sumi
authors.affiliation: 1 Department of Oral and Maxillofacial Radiology, Graduate School, Tokyo Medical and Dental University, Tokyo, Japan.
authors.forename: Tohru
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Kurabayashi
mesh_terms: D011861:Radiography, Dental / Q000379:methods*; D041623:Tomography, Optical Coherence
keywords: chart; dental; device; optical coherence tomography; resolution