Dental hygiene is an important component to the overall health of a person. Early detection of dental disease is crucial in preventing adverse outcomes. While X-rays are currently the most accurate gold standard for dental disease detection, they are not accessible to many around the world.
Carnegie Mellon College of Engineering researchers have teamed up with the University of Pittsburgh School of Dental Medicine to create a dental health sensing system that uses off-the-shelf electric toothbrushes for dental condition detection. The work is published in the journal Proceedings of the ACM on Interactive, Mobile, Wearable and Ubiquitous Technologies . According to the Centers for Disease Control, as of 2024, approximately 57 million Americans live in a dental health professional shortage area and about 67% of those shortage areas are in rural communities.
By offering an electric toothbrush that can perform at-home dental self-examinations, the hope is to provide dental care to millions of people who would otherwise not receive it. The ToMoBrush (Tooth Monitoring Brush / Tomorrow's Toothbrush) explores the potential of using an off-the-shelf electric toothbrush with minimal hardware modification for dental health sensing to enable regular, at-home dental self-examinations. Rather than viewing a toothbrush purely as a cleaning instrument, ToMoBrush leverages the fact that an electric toothbrush emits acoustic signals that are generated by rapid automatic bristle vibrations.
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