Tissue Optical Clearing in the Ultraviolet for Clinical Use in Dentistry to Optimize the Treatment of Chronic Recurrent Aphthous Stomatitis

The immersion optical clearing (OC) treatment with a highly concentrated glycerol solution has induced three new tissue windows in the UV spectral range of gingival tissues – from 200 to 250 nm, from 250 to 300 nm and from 300 to 400 nm. By combining the immersion OC technique in human tissues with UV-spectroscopy, it was possible to verify and study the major OC mechanisms – tissue dehydration and refractive index matching, and that the OC efficiency is higher in the deep-UV than in the visible-NIR range. Since all biological tissues present high scattering in the UV range, the presented technology, which basically reduces the strong light scattering in the UV range, has a broad application area in medicine. The effectiveness of the developed technology combining UV phototherapy and OC in application to treatment of aphthous recurrent stomatitis in children was demonstrated.