The Whole Tooth

Trainee dentists need plenty of practice but getting hold of real teeth for training purposes can be difficult. What’s more, using extracted natural teeth poses a risk of infection, and there can be wide variations in shapes and sizes. Although artificial teeth are available, made from various coloured resins that represent different components such as pulp or root, they don’t behave in the same way as genuine gnashers and aren’t well liked by students. Researchers are now developing ways of turning real-life imaging data from CT scans into lifelike 3D printed models like the one here, which are designed to more accurately reflect the structure, composition and properties of natural teeth. There’s more work to be done to develop the technique but given that nearly two thirds of dental procedures done by undergraduate trainees fail because they’ve had to learn with artificial teeth, let’s hope that they make it snappy.

Written by Kat Arney

Kat Arney

Writer

Dr Kat Arney is an award-winning science writer, broadcaster and public speaker, and is the founder and Creative Director of First Create The Media.

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• Image by A. Cresswell-Boyes, Queen Mary University of London
• Dental Physical Sciences, Institute of Dentistry, Francis Bancroft Building, Queen Mary University of London, London, UK
• Image copyright held by the original authors
• Research published in the Journal of Microscopy, June 2018