A Study Of Pressure Distribution Measurement System For Tooth

Occlusal contact is the result which cooperates by teeth, periodontium, lower jaw and interrelated nerval muscles. Modality and function disharmony can arise mouth dysfunction, it is called occlusal illness. Bite force and its distribution are very important for dentist to diagnose the occlusal contact status. In our country, people use Photocclusion Methods, T-scanâ…¡system or simple sensor for measurement, without homemade measurement system. The author tries to design a system which uses 16 sensors to meansure the distribution of bite force.The main contents of the thesis are summarized as follows:1. Sensor is the core of pressure distribution measurement system. The general structure of the measurement system and its sensor technology are described in this paper. In terms of the demand of the design and theortical analysis, the press-resistive method is chosen for sensor, and conductive rubber is chosen for sensor sensitive material as it is facile, low cost, easily to produce and its resistance change greatly with the pressure pushed on it.2. Based on the press-resistive property of the conductive rubber and specification, which references to a tooth model from hospital, a senor array is designed, as well as its manufacturing method and technics. According to the revised theory for smart transducer, a revised instrument is designed with handy materials.3. The signal process hardware circuits for sensor array are designed. The anti-jamming technology for Data Acquisition is analyzed. The DAQ card is USB-6009 from NI Corporation.The software of the system is programed by LabVIEW including data acquire block, data process block and display block.4. The sensor array is proofreaded by means of a revised instrument.The formula is equated by MATLAB for linearity with input and output of transducers.The measurement system is used to measure the occlusal contact pressure distribution under two conditions. From experiments the satisfactory results are got, so the sensor technology based on conductive rubber is feasible. At last the sources of error in the system is studied.