Gadget masks whine of dentist's drill

A new device which filters out the drill's whining noise could help alleviate people's fears of visiting the dentist.

For many people, the sound of the dental drill alone is enough to create anxiety about dental treatment. Some patients even avoid visits to the dentist because of it.

Scientists at Kings College, Brunel and the London South Bank universities have developed a gadget which plugs into MP3 players or mobile phones, between the device and the headphones.

The gadget contains a microphone and a chip that analyses the incoming sound wave and produces an inverted wave to cancel out unwanted noise - in this case the high pitch of the dentist's drill.

It also uses technology called "adaptive filtering", where electronic filters lock onto sound waves and remove them, even if the amplitude and frequency of the sound waves change as the drill is being used.

The patient can then listen to their own music, but cannot hear the familiar high pitched whine of the dentist's drill. They can still hear instructions from the dentist.

The team behind the prototype hope the device could address people's fears and encourage them to seek the dental treatment.

Professor Brian Millar at King's College London's Dental Institute, who pioneered the invention, said: "Many people put off going to the dentist because of anxiety associated with the noise of the dentist's drill. But this device has the potential to make fear of the drill a thing of the past.

"The beauty of this gadget is that it would be fairly cost-effective for dentists to buy, and any patient with an MP3 player would be able to benefit from it, at no extra cost."

This article was published on Mon 10 January 2011