Exploratory study of the three-dimensional morphological variation of the jaw associated to teeth loss

The aim of this study is to evaluate the morphological variability in mandibles with different types of edentulism, comparing the use of traditional morphometrics and tridimensional geometric morphometrics.

Traditional morphometrics and geometric morphometrics (GM) exploratory analysis, by principal components (PCs) and PC scores, were performed on a sample of 24 cadaveric hemi mandibles. A digital reconstruction of 3D surfaces of each specimen was obtained by CT scans segmentation. The mandibles were divided in three groups: full dentition (G1), partial edentition (G2) and total edentition (G3). The results of the two methods were compared in relation to the morphological variability determined with each method.

Both methods were consistent in terms of morphological variability between the defined groups. The main shape variations observed were a decrease in mandibular body height, a widening of the cross sectional morphology on the symphysis, a shorten-narrowed Ramus and a deeper sigmoid notch, in the partially or totally edentition groups, compared to the full dentition group.

The general patterns of morphological variations associated with edentulism that have been reported in literature could be visualized with GM method, which had not been previously used for this purpose. The GM methods could offer a more detailed definition of shape variations, which is critical in a clinical context. Moreover, GM allowed defining configurations of mean morphologies and an image library with different types of morphological variations.