明星八卦

Patient fear of dental drill (also known as a dental handpiece) noise is a worldwide issue. Drill noise can be very uncomfortable for patients and dentists due to its high-frequency characteristic and leads to avoidance of treatment, particularly by more extreme sufferers, as well as causing distress to many who still undergo treatment despite their fear.

SileDent is a commercialisation project in collaboration with TBG Solutions Ltd and King’s College London Dental Institute, funded by Innovate UK. This research has developed a novel Adaptive Filtering (AF) device for reducing dental drill noise to be worn by patients that maintains vital communication between the dentist and patient. Audio signals typically comprise several characteristics and in practice, each of these has different relationships to the AF parameters.

This research has tuned the AF parameters in terms of relevant audio signal performance measures. Many device prototypes are currently undergoing trials with dentists in the UK and some international sites.