Shwetak Patel, former CCC Council member and Washington Research Foundation Entrepreneurship Endowed Professor in Computer Science & Engineering and Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Washington, was recently featured in ScienceDaily for his work on a new prototype that can spot acidic conditions that lead to cavities.

Identifying areas of plaque with high acidity can show dentists which teeth on a patient are at the highest risk of developing cavities.

“Plaque has a lot of bacteria that produce acid when they interact with the sugar in our food,” said Manuja Sharma, lead author and a doctoral student in the UW Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. “This acid is what causes the corrosion of the tooth surface and eventually cavities. So, if we can capture information about the acidic activity, we can get an idea of how bacteria are growing in the dental biofilm, or plaque.”

Patel, along with his colleagues at University of Washington, developed a tool that can measure the the acidity built up by bacteria in plaque using LED light and an FDA-approved chemical dye. The optical device measures the reactions of the light to the dye to decipher a numerical reading of the pH of plaque on each tooth of the patient. This not only has the potential to prevent cavities from forming but also limits the amount of testing for specific harmful bacteria.

Co-authors include Lauren Lee, UW Department of Microbiology; Matthew Carson, UW Human Photonics Laboratory; David Park, Se An, Micah Bovenkamp, Jess Cayetano, Ian Berude, Zheng Xu, Alireza Sadr, UW School of Dentistry; and Shwetak Patel, UW Electrical and Computer Engineering, Paul. G. Allen School of Computer Science.  You can see the full article here.