Biomedical Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
teeth. In addition, there is a thin layer around the tooth roots called
cementum. It is a thin layer of a bone-like calcified tissue that covers
dentine at the roots of teeth and anchors them to the jaw [681-684].
Finally, there is the core called pulp (commonly called “the nerve”)
— it is a remnant of the embryologic organ for tooth development
and contains nerves and blood vessels necessary for tooth function
(Fig. 1.13) [576, 577, 676, 677]. Both dentine and cementum are
mineralized connective tissues with an organic matrix of collagenous
proteins, while the inorganic component of them consists of
biological apatite. As shown in Table 1.2, dentine, cementum and
bone are quite similar and for general purposes of material scientists
they can be regarded as being essentially the same material [454,
535, 544, 546-549, 552-556, 562-567, 569-571, 590, 594, 595,
599, 662, 663]. Thus, most statements made in the previous section
for bones are also valid for dentine and cementum; however, unlike
bones, both dentine and cementum lack vascularization [685].
Figure 1.13
A schematic drawing of a tooth. Other very good graphical
sketches of the mammalian tooth structure, including the
hierarchical levels, are available in Refs. [533, 584].
Dental enamel is the outermost layer of teeth. It is white and
translucent and its true color might be observed at the cutting edges
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