By José Ignacio Delgado Castaño
Did you know that the Bluetooth in your smartphone, a Danish king from the 10th century, and modern orthodontic treatments are closely related? Have you ever worn a dental appliance and felt a painful and irritating force? Can you imagine knowing the exact force you are sensing in your teeth just from your smartphone?
In 1997, Intel named its new communication after Bluetooth, after the name of the king Harald Gormsson of Norway and Denmark. Harald Gormsson was nicknamed Blåtand in Danish, meaning “blue tooth” in English. The nickname came from a necrosed frontal incisor in the mouth of the king. A few years before, in 1935, a Danish kid had a similar accident to King Harald while seated in the school bus. That kid was Dr. Jens Ove Andreassen, one of the most prominent orthodontists in the 60s in Europe, who helped to develop metallic orthodontic treatments, avoiding necrosis.
Necrosed teeth are not a matter of the past. Even nowadays, poor-quality orthodontic treatments may cause this when excessive force is applied to the tooth.
Around 1 million people start new orthodontic treatments in Spain every year, of which only 60 % of them end up successfully, and 20 % need a restraining device to prevent teeth from returning to their original position.
Clear aligner manufactured in IMDEA Materials and force sensor attached.
Moving teeth is a force-activated process, but force must be adjusted very precisely to prevent pain or necrosis of soft tissues such as the gum or the periodontal ligament. Even during the restraining phase at the end of treatment, the force should be enough to prevent teeth from returning. Currently, orthodontic devices are designed under a standardized protocol that does not account for individual patients or the materials used in the devices. Not all patients require the same force during orthodontic treatment; therefore, not all devices should be made from the same material.
One of our recent experiments centers on a sensor capable of measuring the force an orthodontic device applies to 3D printed dental models. The sensor was designed using widely available, easy-to-find components, with open-source software based on Arduino and Python to make this technology accessible. An even better feature is the Bluetooth interface that can send data to a smartphone if needed.
The Ph.D. researcher José Ignacio Delgado Castaño, under the supervision of Dr. Juan Pedro Fernandez Blázquez, developed this device under an industrial collaboration between the company Secret Aligner S.L. and IMDEA Materials, in which BCD Group also participates.
The primary goal of this collaboration is to develop new materials for invisible plastic orthodontics, using widely available resources to customize the physical properties of the material for each individual treatment.
José Ignacio Delgado is a Ph.D. student in the BCD group at IMDEA Materials Institute. He has a long and multidisciplinary background in materials and polymer science, from printed electronics to plastics for biomedical devices. His current research focuses on new thermoplastics used in dentistry in the clear aligners technique.
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