Significance: Photoacoustic imaging has shown advantages over the periodontal probing method in measuring the periodontal probing depth, but the large size of conventional photoacoustic transducers prevents imaging of the more posterior teeth.

Aim: Our aim is to develop a photoacoustic imaging system to image the more posterior periodontal pocket.

Approach: We report a clinical “hockey-stick”-style transducer integrated with fibers for periodontal photoacoustic imaging. Cuttlefish ink labeled the periodontal pocket as the photoacoustic contrast agent.

Results: We characterized the imaging system and then measured the pocket depth of 35 swine teeth. Three raters evaluated the performance of the hockey-stick transducer. The measurements between the Williams probing (gold standard) and the photoacoustic methods were blinded but highly correlated. We showed a bias of ∼0.3  mm for the imaging-based technique versus Williams probing. The minimum inter-reliability was over 0.60 for three different raters of varying experience, suggesting that this approach to measure the periodontal pocket is reproducible. Finally, we imaged three pre-molars of a human subject. We could access more upper and posterior teeth than conventional linear transducers.

Conclusions: The unique angle shape of the hockey-stick transducer allows it to image more posterior teeth than regular linear transducers. This study demonstrated the ability of a hockey-stick transducer to measure the periodontal pocket via photoacoustic imaging.