Summary Human tissues contain many kinds of minerals and trace essential elements that
act as catalytic or structural components of large biochemical molecules. In addition, various
metallic and inorganic materials are used in dental and medical materials and devices. In the
dental and medical fields, specimens that are wet and/or have low heat resistance are often
requested for elemental analysis. Therefore, a rapid and non-destructive method of elemental
analysis is required. X-ray fluorescence analysis (XRF) provides useful elemental information
about specimens without causing specimen damage or requiring extra specimen preparations.
In this paper, an outline of the XRF apparatus and applications of XRF to hard and soft dental
and medical specimen tissues are presented, and dental materials are reviewed.