Ultrasonic teeth cleaning appliance having spatial, temporal and/or frequency variations
AssigneeKoninklijke Philips N.V.
InventorJohn Douglas Fraser
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Abstract
The appliance includes an appliance body (12) as well as a system for producing microbubbles (20) and a system for producing an ultrasound signal beam (22) in a frequency range which activates at least some of the microbubbles. The appliance includes at least one of the following: (a) an array of ultrasound transducer elements (40) which produce a plurality of ultrasound signal beams; (b) an amplitude modulation assembly (51) for modulating the amplitude of the ultrasound signal; and (c) a frequency modulation system (61) for changing the frequency of the ultrasound signals over a selected range, to impact a range of microbubble sizes.
Claims15
An appliance for cleaning teeth, comprising:
- an appliance body (12);
- a system for producing a slurry of microbubbles (20) and directing them to the region of the teeth to be cleaned;
- and
- a system for producing ultrasound signal beams (22) with a frequency in the range of 100 KHz to 1 MHz, directed to and in said frequency range for actuating the microbubbles for cleaning, wherein the system for producing the ultrasound signals includes (a) an array of transducer elements (40) to produce the ultrasound signals;
- wherein some of the transducer elements are separately power driven to provide separate power control over their associated ultrasound signals, and at least one of the following:
- (b) an amplitude modulation assembly (51) for modulating the amplitude of the ultrasound signals in accordance with an amplitude modulation signal;
- and (c) a frequency modulation system (61) for changing the frequency of the ultrasound signals over a predetermined frequency modulation range in accordance with a frequency modulation signal.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.