OCT AS INNOVATIVE

NDT-3D-TOMOGRAPHY
METHOD
in Studies on Fossilized Teeth
Problem: age determination in bears
• Until now, it was necessary to destroy several teeth for the
determination of individual age.

• A standard procedure for age determination was published by

Irena DEBELJAK (1996), consisting of at least five steps:
1. Cutting
2. Grinding
3. Etching
4. Staining
5. Counting

• Two big disadvantages:

1. The teeth were (partly) destroyed.
2. Time consuming technique.
The aim: a different approach
• A different approach to cross-sectional imaging in
palaeontology means a new method.

• Non-destructive methods in palaeontology providing

cross-sectional images:
• Conventional CT
• Conventional µ-CT

• Are there any “new” methods in the fields of micro

imaging techniques? Happily there are!
MATERIAL
Material used
Inv. No.   Specimen   Side   Species   Remarks  
GS 26-1   M1 inf.   dext.   Ursus ingressus RABEDER Senile, occlusal surface
et al. (2004)   heavily worn on lingual side  
GS 108-1   M1 inf.   sin.   Ursus ingressus RABEDER Adult, occlusal surface
et al. (2004)   slightly worn  
GS 108-2   M1 inf.   dext.   Ursus ingressus RABEDER Subadult, roots not
et al. (2004)   yet closed  

Table 1: Examined teeth of Ursus ingressus RABEDER et al. (2004) from Gamssulzen cave (GS) in
Lower Austria (Austria) and of Ursus eremus RABEDER et al. (2004) from Ochsenhalt cave (Styria).
METHODS
Micro imaging techniques
Resolution vs. Image Penetration

Standard clinical
1 mm THz
Resolution

100 µm

High Frequency
10 µm
OCT

1 µm
Standard
Microscopy Confocal
Microscopy

1 µm 10 µm 100 µm 1 mm 1 cm 10 cm

Image Penetration
What‘s OCT?
• OCT is an acronym: Optical Coherence Tomography

• It is a photo-optical tomography method for semi-

transparent materials and was developed in 1991.
(HUANG et al., Science 254, 1178 (1991).

• OCT was originally used for in-vivo diagnostics

in biomedicine and is strongly used in medicine.

• It was quickly developed in the last years and also

became an important tool in material sciences and
pharmaceutical industry (QC).
OCT: Introduction
• Initially developed for medical diagnostics (e.g. diseases
of retina, skin, arteria, teeth, …). Fundus oculi 5 x 1 mm2

• Provides cross-sectional images.

PIRCHER et al., Opt. Express, Vol. 12, No. 24,

5940-5951(2004)

• Depth- and lateral resolution decoupled, typical values:

• Penetration depth < 3 mm

• Lateral resolution 8 − 22 µm
• Depth resolution 4 − 19 µm
OCT: Introduction
• Wavelengths in use: NIR (Near Infra Red)

• Light sources: NIR lasers, centre wavelengths

between 800 and 1600 nm

And the best of all:

• No harmful ionizing radiation is needed!
Depth resolution vs. Penetration depth
Depending on the light source:
Center Wavelength λc and
Bandwidth Δλ

Trade-off: high depth resolution versus high penetration depth.

Ultra-High Resolution (UHR)

high resolution
!Standard depth resolution ~ 4 − 19 µm in air

!Ultra-high resolution: → 2 µm in air

in material with refractivehigh

index 1.5 → 1.5
penetration µm
depth
OCT: setup
Time domain OCT

Low coherence length

→ one single peak per interface

D. HUANG et al., Science 254, 1178 (1991)

 Time domain vs. Spectral domain
Time-Domain Spectral-Domain
Lightsource Lightsource

BS Ref. mirror Grating Ref. mirror

Detector

Sample Sample
+ FFT
• auto focus possible
Line-sensor
• direct en-face scans
• 1 − 1000 depth-scans/s 20.000 − 100.000 depth-scans/s
Additional methods
• Conventional method
• Cutting, etching, staining & counting (DEBELJAK, 1996, 2000)
• Binocular in use: Wild M3B with camera-adapter.

• Non-destructive methods
• Conventional µ-CT
• THz-Method

• Literature cited:
• DEBELJAK, I., 1996. A simple preparation technique of cave bear teeth for age determination by
cementum increments. — Revue Paléobiol., 15/1:105 – 108, Genève.
• DEBELJAK, I., 2000. Dental cementum in the cave bear; comparison of different preparation
techniques. — Geol. zbor., 15:53 – 66, Ljubljana.
RESULTS
Conventional methods

GS 26-1 GS 26-1
Conventional methods

GS 108-1 GS 108-2
OCT for age determination

Legend: GS 26-1: Mesial root of a right lower M1 of a senile individual of Ursus ingressus from
Gamssulzen cave (Lower Austria). a) Axial cross-section via µ-CT; b) etched and stained micro section
(Debeljak, 1996); c) 3D volume rendering of µ-CT data; d) 3D volume rendering of OCT data
(lc = 1330 nm). e) Corresponding axial cross section via OCT.
Applied OCT – M1 inf., 3D reconstruction

GS 126-1
Results
• We obtained the following results:
• Lots of cross-sectional images…
• from conventional method
• from X-ray µ-CT
• from OCT

• Leading us to the conclusion that…

• the M1 (GS 26-1) belonged to a bear which was 16 years old.
• the M1 (GS 108-1) belonged to a bear which was 1 year old.
• the M1 (GS 108-2) belonged to a bear which was less
than 1 year old.
CONCLUSIONS
Conclusions
• X-ray µ-CT does not produce suitable results for
determination of individual age.

• OCT is able to produce HR-scans of sufficient

penetration-depth in teeth.

• Thus OCT showed its ability as a non-destructive non-

contact tomography method to count the annual
appositional lines in teeth.

• In future, OCT-systems will be able to employ sources of

wider spectral width, which will provide us with even
better results.
The authors…
The article following this presentation will be published in
Palaeontologia Electronica (palaeo-electronica.org).

Elisabeth Leiss-Holzinger a), Gerhard Withalm b), Christian Gusenbauer c)

a) RECENDT, Research Center for Non-Destructive Testing GmbH, Science Park 2/2.OG,
Altenberger Straße 69, 4040 Linz, Austria; elisabeth.leiss@recendt.at
b) Institute of Palaeontology, University of Vienna, Althanstraße 14, 1090 Wien, Austria;
gerhard.withalm@univie.ac.at
c) FH Department of Medical Technology, Upper Austria University of Applied Sciences,
Stelzhamerstraße 23, 4600 Wels, Austria