Root canals are surrounded by dentine and cementum
that are insulators to electric current. At the minor
apical foramen, however, there is a small hole in which
conductive materials within the canal are electrically
connected to the periodontal ligament that is a
conductor of electric current. The resistive material of
the canal (dentine, tissue, fluid) with a particular
resistivity forms a resistor, the value of which depends
on the length, cross-sectional area and the resistivity of
the materials (Fig. 5). If an endodontic file penetrates
inside the canal, and approaches the canal terminus,
the resistance between the end of the instrument and
the apical portion of the canal decreases, because the
effective length of the resistive material inside the canal
(l in Fig. 5) decreases.
As well as resistive properties, the structure of the tooth
has capacitive characteristics. Assume the file, with a
specific surface area, to be one side of a capacitor and
the conductive material (e.g. periodontal ligament)
outside the dentine being the other plate of that
capacitor. Tissue and fluid inside the canal, in addition
to the cementum and dentine of the canal wall, can be
considered as separators of the two conductive plates
and determine a dielectric constant e. This structure
forms a capacitor, much more complex than symbolized
in Fig. 6.
The electrical structure of the canal is much more
complicated than the resistive and capacitive elements
described above and the exact modelling of it is not a
straightforward task (Meredith & Gulabivala 1997).
Meredith & Gulabivala (1997) proposed an equivalent
circuit that modelled the root canal system including
periapical tissues. They found that the root canal acted
as a complex electrical network with resistive and
capacitive elements. It exhibited complex impedance
characteristics having series and parallel resistive and
capacitive components with a simplified model shown
in Fig. 7.