1. Field of the invention
The invention relates to optical diagnosing; in particular, to an oral optical diagnosing apparatus and operating method thereof capable of performing optical sensing to the surface and cross-section tissue state of the mouth in a non-invasive way, and generating early diagnosis result according to the sensed optical information to trace the patient's condition in a way of long-term and fixed point.
2. Description of the prior art
In recent years, with the continuous development of medical technology and biotechnology, the regions of medical diagnosing and biochemical test have become more and more important. Therefore, various instruments related to medical diagnosing and biochemical test are shown in the market. Especially, oral health is more and more important in the modern society, the oral diagnosing equipment used to diagnose the human oral state has been widely applied in the dental of hospitals and dental clinics.
According to the statistic data, in recent years, the ranking of mucositis is rising in Taiwan's cancer statistics list. It is because some people in Taiwan are addicted to eat areca. Conventionally, the mucositis is mostly visually observed by the doctor or in a biopsy way. In ordinary procedures, the patient will provide his/her disease condition to the doctor, and the doctor will visually observe the condition of the patient. If the doctor considers that the disease condition of the patient should be further confirmed, an oral sample biopsy procedure will be performed on the patient.
However, in the above-mentioned conventional oral diagnosing process, not only the diagnosing steps are complicated, but also the oral sample must be analyzed by other analyzing equipments. It is time-consuming and labor-intensive. In addition, the intrusion damage and uncomfortable inside the mouth of the patient are also drawbacks caused during the conventional oral diagnosing process.
Therefore, the invention provides an oral optical diagnosing apparatus and operating method thereof to solve the above-mentioned problems occurred in the prior arts.
A first embodiment of the invention is an oral optical diagnosing apparatus. In this embodiment, the oral optical diagnosing apparatus includes a positioning module, an optical sensing module, a processing module, and a display module. The positioning module selects a region to be diagnosed in a mouth; the optical sensing module performs an optical sensing on the region to be diagnosed to obtain an optical information related to the region to be diagnosed; the processing module analyzes the optical information to generate an optical diagnosed result; the display module displays the optical diagnosed result.
In practical applications, the optical sensing module uses an optical interference technology (e.g., an optical coherence tomography (OCT) technology) to perform a longitudinal profile test on a mucosa under the region to be diagnosed in the mouth to obtain the optical information related to a longitudinal profile of the mucosa.
In addition, the optical sensing module includes an object lens and a temperature control unit disposed near the object lens. The temperature control unit performs a heated demisting process on the object lens to prevent the object lens from being disturbed by a mist in the mouth. The optical sensing module realizes a 3D motion in the mouth through motor components or in a manual way. The optical sensing module encased in a replaceable shell is disposed above a tongue in the mouth.
A second embodiment of the invention is an oral optical diagnosing apparatus operating method. The oral optical diagnosing apparatus includes a positioning module, an optical sensing module, a processing module, and a display module. The oral optical diagnosing apparatus operating method includes steps of: (a) the positioning module selecting a region to be diagnosed in a mouth; (b) the optical sensing module performing an optical sensing on the region to be diagnosed to obtain an optical information related to the region to be diagnosed; (c) the processing module analyzing the optical information to generate an optical diagnosed result; (d) the display module displaying the optical diagnosed result.
Compared to prior arts, the oral optical diagnosing apparatus and operating method thereof in the invention performs optical sensing to the surface and cross-section tissue state of the mouth in a non-invasive way, therefore, it not only can effectively improve the drawbacks of the intrusion damage and uncomfortable inside the mouth of the patient caused by the prior art, but also has no side effects caused by radioactive tests.
In addition, the oral optical diagnosing apparatus of the invention can generate early diagnosis result according to the sensed optical information related to the inner condition in the mouth, and provide the functions of determining potable target region and confirming the region to be diagnosed. Therefore, it can provide the patient functions of long-term and fixed point tracing disease conditions.
The advantage and spirit of the invention may be understood by the following detailed descriptions together with the appended drawings.
A scope of the invention is to provide an oral optical diagnosing apparatus and operating method thereof. The an oral optical diagnosing apparatus and operating method thereof performs optical sensing to the surface and cross-section tissue state of the mouth in a non-invasive way, and generates early diagnosis result according to the sensed optical information to provide the patient functions of long-term and fixed point tracing disease conditions.
A first embodiment of the invention is an oral optical diagnosing apparatus. Please refer to
Next, the functions of the modules of the oral optical diagnosing apparatus 1 will be introduced respectively as follows.
At first, the diagnosed position of the patient should be continuously traced to obtain the change of its pathological state, therefore, the role that the positioning module 10 of the oral optical diagnosing apparatus 1 plays becomes very important. In this embodiment, the positioning module 10 firstly confirms the feature points in the patient's mouth to confirm that the patient's mouth is the optical diagnosed target of the oral optical diagnosing apparatus 1. After the patient's mouth is confirmed, the oral optical diagnosing apparatus 1 will set up the standard point in the patient's mouth, and select the region to be diagnosed in the patient's mouth through an image comparing method for the optical sensing module 12 to perform the following optical sensing procedure on the region to be diagnosed.
In practical applications, the positioning module 10 of the oral optical diagnosing apparatus 1 can have different types of design without any specific limitations. For example, as shown in
Once the positioning module 10 selects the region to be diagnosed, the positioning module 10 can also capture many images of the region to be diagnosed and its neighboring regions through the micro-camera 18 for image comparing in the further. It should be noticed that the above-mentioned image comparing method can use not only the so-called “grayscale levels comparing method” to confirm the position of the region to be diagnosed through the grid distribution of levels, but also the so-called “eigenvalue comparing method” to use the special symbol target (e.g., the position of the teeth in the mouth) near the region to be diagnosed as important reference for comparing in the future.
That is to say, it is not necessary that the target compared when the positioning module 10 positions the region to be diagnosed is the region to be diagnosed. If the positioning module 10 can correctly position the region to be diagnosed by optical sensing, it can be other targets near the region to be diagnosed. Therefore, the target compared by the positioning module 10 when positioning is not necessary to be the same with the region to be diagnosed when the optical sensing module 12 performs optical sensing.
The optical sensing module 12 is used to perform optical sensing procedure on the region to be diagnosed to obtain the optical information related to the region to be diagnosed. In fact, the optical sensing module 12 uses an optical interference technology (e.g., an optical coherence tomography technology) to perform a longitudinal profile test on a mucosa under the region to be diagnosed in the mouth to obtain the optical information related to a longitudinal profile of the mucosa. In general, the depth that the optical sensing module 12 senses the tissue under the region to be diagnosed can be about 2˜3 mm, and the wavelength of the light it uses can be 1300 nm or 840 nm, but not limited to this case.
In practical applications, the structure of the optical sensing module 12 can be designed in different types. For example, please refer to
As shown in
As to the optical sensing module 12 in
From above, it can be known that the design type of the optical sensing module of the oral optical diagnosing apparatus 1 has no specific limitations. It can choose to use different designs of single component type or combination type, or integrated with the positioning module. In addition, the two reflectors 120e in
It should be noticed that in order to prevent the objective lens 120d from being interfered by the mist in the mouth when the optical sensing module 12 performs optical sensing on the region to be diagnosed, as shown in
As to the contact end replacing component 124 in
In practical applications, the positioning module 10 of the invention can provide various aids for different disease backgrounds of the patients. For example, the initial wound or ulcer may be formed on the region to be diagnosed in patient's mouth, therefore, when the oral optical diagnosing apparatus 1 performs optical sensing, direct contact between the oral optical diagnosing apparatus 1 and the region to be diagnosed on the oral tissue surface should be avoided, so that the patient will feel more comfortable. In view of this, the positioning module 10 of the oral optical diagnosing apparatus 1 can further provide the distance measuring function which is realized by comparing the sizes of surface pattern or directly by the built-in optical transceiver (not shown in figures).
As shown in
The optical information captured by the optical sensing module 12 can be transmitted to the processing module 14 through the light path (such as fiber or photoconductive element). Then, the processing module 14 will process the received optical information and perform longitudinal profile analysis on the optical information to generate an optical diagnosed result. At last, the display module 16 will display the optical diagnosed result for the user to observe it.
In fact, the way that the display module 16 displays the optical diagnosed result has no specific limitations. For example, the display module 16 can display the optical diagnosed result through images with different colors or shades; the display module 16 can display the optical diagnosed result through the voices with different volumes, frequencies, tempos; the display module 16 can display the optical diagnosed result through different temperatures; the display module 16 can also emit lights with different brightness or colors to display the optical diagnosed result.
In practical applications, the oral optical diagnosing apparatus 1 can be reasonably configured according to different platform structures, for example, designs of hand-held type (
As shown in
In practical applications, the design of sensing base used in the above-mentioned oral optical diagnosing apparatus 1 can be used cooperated with the optical sensing module 12 with different designs. For example, as shown in
A second embodiment of the invention is an oral optical diagnosing apparatus operating method. In this embodiment, the oral optical diagnosing apparatus includes a positioning module, an optical sensing module, a processing module, and a display module. Please refer to
As shown in
After the region to be diagnosed is selected, the method performs step S12 that the optical sensing module performs an optical sensing on the region to be diagnosed to obtain an optical information related to the region to be diagnosed. In fact, the optical sensing module uses an optical interference technology (e.g., an optical coherence tomography technology) to perform a longitudinal profile test on a mucosa under the region to be diagnosed in the mouth to obtain the optical information related to a longitudinal profile of the mucosa. In general, the depth that the optical sensing module senses the tissue under the region to be diagnosed can be about 2˜3 mm, and the wavelength of the light it uses can be 1300 nm or 840 nm, but not limited to this case.
In addition, the optical sensing module includes an object lens and a temperature control unit. The temperature control unit can be a heating ring disposed near the object lens, but not limited to this. In step S12, when the optical sensing module performs optical sensing to the region to the diagnosed, the temperature control unit will perform a heated demisting process on the object lens to prevent the object lens from being disturbed by a mist in the mouth.
In practical applications, the optical sensing module can realize a 3D motion in the mouth through motor components or in a manual way, and the optical sensing module encased in a replaceable shell is disposed above a tongue in the mouth to provide a more comfortable and clean environment for the patients.
Then, the method performs step S14 that the processing module analyzes the optical information to generate an optical diagnosed result. In fact, the processing module can compare the optical diagnosed result with the previous optical diagnosed result to obtain early diagnosis result related to the inner condition in the mouth. By doing so, the oral optical diagnosing apparatus operating method of the invention does not have the complicated procedures of the visual observation by doctor or sample biopsy in the prior art.
At last, the method will perform step S16 that the display module displays the optical diagnosed result for the user or doctor to observe it to judge the condition of the patient. In fact, the way that the display module displays the optical diagnosed result in step S16 has no specific limitations. For example, the display module can display the optical diagnosed result through images with different colors or shades, the voices with different volumes, frequencies, tempos, different temperatures, and different brightness or colors.
Compared to prior arts, the oral optical diagnosing apparatus and operating method thereof in the invention performs optical sensing to the surface and cross-section tissue state of the mouth in a non-invasive way, therefore, it not only can effectively improve the drawbacks of the intrusion damage and uncomfortable inside the mouth of the patient caused by the prior art, but also has no side effects caused by radioactive tests.
In addition, the oral optical diagnosing apparatus of the invention can generate early diagnosis result according to the sensed optical information related to the inner condition in the mouth, and provide the functions of determining potable target region and confirming the region to be diagnosed. Therefore, it can provide the patient functions of long-term and fixed point tracing disease conditions.
With the example and explanations above, the features and spirits of the invention will be hopefully well described. Those skilled in the art will readily observe that numerous modifications and alterations of the device may be made while retaining the teaching of the invention. Accordingly, the above disclosure should be construed as limited only by the metes and bounds of the appended claims.
Number | Date | Country | Kind |
---|---|---|---|
100108756 | Mar 2011 | TW | national |