My experience yesterday with my dentist using sound to assess problems with my teeth made me ponder how else sound is useful in dentistry. After a little Googling:
• First, there’s the most obvious. What dentist office doesn’t use soothing music in a (mostly failed?) attempt to calm patients’ nerves? I most frequently seem to hear oldies, smooth jazz, adult contemporary and classical. No System Of A Down or Foo Fighters in the dentist’s office.
• Vibrations in the ultrasonic range (20-400kHz) are combined with water or sometimes chemical solutions for cleaning equipment. The vibrations create millions of microscopic bubbles (“cavitation”) and it is actually the bubbles that do the work.
• Ultrasonic vibrations are actually useful in cleaning (“scaling”) teeth, too. And the funny thing is I found references to real sound-geek terms like “auto-tune” and “harmonic frequency” in the literature. It seems that the controlling the power output of the sound waves involved is key to maximizing the cleaning effect while minimizing pain and discomfort. As the tip of the impliment passes around the teeth, its natural harmonic frequency changes, and newer technology automatically changes settings to accomodate this and help smoothly optimize power output.
• My personal favorite: a high-frequency noise cancellation technology that plugs into your mp3 player so you can listen to your own music, cancel out the noise of the drill, and still hear the doctor’s voice! Here’s something on YouTube and something on GizMag.