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摘要

The whirr of the drill hasn't been re-placed by the flash of a laser - at least notyet. But advances are allowing lasers towork their way increasingly into dentaldiagnostics and treatment. Laser-basedoptical coherence tomography, for exam-ple, soon could help highlight disease,while laser treatment of teeth could makethem more resistant to cavities. When cav-ities do occur, lasers could remove the dis-eased tissue with less trauma. They evencould make root canals more pleasant andsuccessful.