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Updated: Apr 19, 2026
Author Spotlight: 3D Movement Assessment of Maxillary Posterior Teeth in Clear Aligner Treatment
Published on: February 23, 2024
Three-dimensional monitoring of root movement during orthodontic treatment
Robert J Lee1, Andre Weissheimer2, John Pham3
1Dental student, School of Dentistry, University of California at Los Angeles, Los Angeles, Calif.
Introduction:
A significant objective of orthodontic treatment is to achieve proper and stable tooth positions that involve not only the crowns, but also their roots. However, the current methods of clinically monitoring root alignment are unreliable and inaccurate. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to develop a methodology that can accurately identify root position in a clinical situation.
Methods:
Pretreatment and posttreatment cone-beam computed tomography (CBCT) and extraoral laser scans of study models of a patient were obtained. Threshold segmentation of the CBCT scans was performed, resulting in 3-dimensional surface models. The pretreatment CBCT teeth were isolated from their respective arches for individual tooth manipulation. These isolated pretreatment CBCT teeth were superimposed onto the posttreatment surface scan depicting the expected root position setup. To validate the accuracy of the expected root position setup, it was compared with the true root position represented by the posttreatment CBCT scan. Color displacement maps were generated to measure any differences between the expected and true root positions.
Results:
Color map analysis through crown superimposition showed displacement differences of 0.148 ± 0.411 mm for the maxillary roots and 0.065 ± 0.364 mm for the mandibular roots.
Conclusions:
This methodology has been demonstrated to be an accurate and reliable approach to visualize the 3-dimensional positions of all teeth, including the roots, with no additional radiation applied.
