Clinical comparison of an ultrasonographic periodontal probe to manual and controlled-force probing

An ultrasonographic periodontal probe has been developed that offers the potential for earlier detection of periodontal disease activity, non-invasive diagnosis, and greater reliability of measurement. A comparison study of this ultrasonographic probe to both a standard manual probe and a controlled-force probe was conducted to evaluate its clinical effectiveness. Twelve patients enrolled into this study, with two half-mouth examinations conducted on each patient, scheduled 1 h apart. A one-way analysis of variance was performed to compare the results for the three sets of probing depth measurements, followed by a repeated measures analysis to assess the reproducibility of the different probing techniques. Both methods exhibited a similar tendency toward increasing pocket depths as Gingival Index scores increased. Future studies will complete the development of more effective automated feature recognition algorithms that convert the ultrasonographic echoes into pocket depth readings.