A team of Hong Kong based oral healthcare experts, including the scientist responsible for the Rock Gripper, Grinder and Corer tool on the Beagle 2 Mars Lander in 2003, have collaborated to co-design what may be the world’s most advanced ultrasonic electric toothbrush – the NJ Toothbrush.
The NJ Toothbrush is the only toothbrush in the world that can brush the complete surface area of a tooth simultaneously. So how did the developers do it?
Precise computer mapping and engineering
The design team from the University of Hong Kong computer mapped a total of six independent bristle bundles that could target EVERY nook and cranny of a tooth, and combined them all into a single toothbrush head.
If you check out the NJ Toothbrush design above, you can see that it resembles an automatic car-wash in the way that the brush head totally encloses the tooth!
The NJ Toothbrush contains a number of other features, including:
- “3E” action – making tooth brushing easy, effective and enjoyable!
- soft bristles to safely clean sub-gumline plaque,
- ultrasonic vibration with thousands of circular micro-actions per bristle, which equates to “millions of target hits” per second from the entire toothbrush head,
- automatically adjusting V-shaped “wings” to custom enclose the different widths of teeth (from molars to front teeth),
- user-friendly design with a self-rotating ball and socket joint design for more ergonomic hand and wrist control as the toothbrush head moves along the dental arch (you simply hold the toothbrush in one position!), and
- balanced force distribution to prevent gum abrasion.
Complete removal of plaque!
Uncontrolled plaque is responsible for gum disease and a number of oral health issues. Despite our best efforts at brushing, clinical studies show that conventional tooth brushing only removes 40% of existing plaque on average – with the remainder left to develop mostly in inter-dental areas along the gumline, and in the crevices on molars.
The NJ Toothbrush has been designed to clean all these hard-to-reach areas with a single pass, as you run it along your upper and lower dental arches in a “rail-track” action. You don’t even have to angle the NJ Toothbrush in any way – which is great news for people with disabilities or lazy brushers!
The developers are currently in negotiations with major toothbrush companies, and hope to release the NJ Toothbrush as soon as possible to help prevent the onset of periodontitis (gum disease) – an oral health condition affecting 20-50% of the global population.
* Image © Copyright 2018 The University of Hong Kong. All Rights Reserved. 
