Reliability and repeatability of pulp volume reconstruction through three different volume calculations

Area of Science:

• Dentistry
• Radiology
• Medical Imaging

Background:

• Accurate dental pulp volume reconstruction is crucial for diagnosing and monitoring pulp canal conditions.
• Cone-beam computed tomography (CBCT) is increasingly used for dental imaging, offering detailed volumetric data.
• Evaluating the variability of segmentation methods is essential for reliable pulp volume assessment.

Purpose of the Study:

• To assess the variability in dental pulp volume measurements using different segmentation techniques.
• To determine the sensitivity of various methods in detecting small volume changes within the dental pulp canal.
• To investigate the impact of parameter variations on automatic segmentation results.

Main Methods:

• Utilized Osirix® and ITK-SNAP software for image analysis.
• Applied diverse segmentation methods (Part A) and volume calculation approaches (Part B) to 21 upper canine CBCT scans.
• Tested data set combinations on a lower molar and upper canine to evaluate automatic segmentation variability (Part C).

Main Results:

• A significant correlation (r > 0.75) was observed among the tested methods.
• No method demonstrated sufficient sensitivity to detect minor volume alterations in the dental pulp canal.
• Automatic segmentation proved highly susceptible to variations in setting parameters.

Conclusions:

• Current volumetric reconstruction and pulp/tooth volume ratio methods do not outperform traditional dental radiographs.
• Further research and advancements in imaging techniques are warranted to improve pulp volume assessment.
• Continued investigation into novel segmentation and reconstruction approaches is recommended.