Assessment of reference areas for superimposition of serial 3D models of patients with advanced periodontitis for volumetric soft tissue evaluation
Marko Kuralt, Aleš Fidler
Abstract
AIM: This study aimed to determine the optimal reference area for superimposition of serial 3D dental models of patients with advanced periodontitis. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Ten pre- and post-periodontal treatment 3D models (median time lapse: 13.1 months) of patients with advanced periodontitis were acquired by intraoral scanning. Superimposition was performed with the iterative closest point algorithm using four reference areas: (A) all stable teeth, (B) all teeth, (C) third palatal rugae and (D) the whole model. The superimposition accuracy was evaluated at two stable evaluation regions using the mean absolute distance and evaluated with two-way ANOVA and post-hoc multivariate model. The intra- and inter-operator reproducibility was calculated by intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC). RESULTS: Superimposition accuracy evaluated at stable tooth evaluation region were 71 ± 29 μm, 73 ± 21 μm, 127 ± 52 μm and 113 ± 53 μm for areas A, B, C and D, respectively. All reference areas showed similarly high ICC values >0.990, except for reference area C showing ICC of 0.821 (intra-operator) and 0.767 (inter-operator) for tooth evaluation area. CONCLUSIONS: Area A and B provide the highest accuracy for superimposition of serial 3D dental models acquired by intraoral scanning of patients with advanced periodontitis.