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Updated: Aug 17, 2026
Mimicking and Measuring Occlusal Erosive Tooth Wear with the "Rub&Roll" and Non-contact Profilometry
Published on: February 2, 2018
Measurement of tooth wear in patients with palatal erosion
D W Bartlett1, L Blunt, B G Smith
1Department of Conservative Dentistry, UMDS, Guy's Hospital.
Aim:
To develop a reproducible method for the assessment of tooth wear in vivo using a laser profilometer.
Design:
A controlled study to measure tooth wear.
Subjects And Methods:
Wear was measured over a 6-month period in 13 patients with unexplained palatal dental erosion and compared with a group of 7 controls without any evidence of abnormal wear.
Main Outcome Measures:
Metal disks were cemented to the tooth surface and impressions taken at 6-month intervals. Wear was estimated by scanning the impressions with a contacting laser profilometer and measuring a change in depth around the disk over a 6-month period using fixed reference points on the metal disks.
Results:
A statistically significant difference was observed between patients with palatal erosion and the controls. Patients with erosion had a median of 36.5 microns of wear over 6 months (range 17.6-108.2) and the controls had a median of 3.7 microns (range 0.5-15.8).
Conclusions:
This paper presents a novel method for measuring erosion using fixed reference points cemented to the palatal surfaces of upper incisor teeth.
