Construction of virtual intercuspal occlusion: Considering tooth displacement

Common impressions cannot accurately duplicate the dental occlusion under occlusal force due to tooth displacement and mandibular deformation. To establish new methods to construct virtual intercuspal occlusion and assess their construction accuracy. The intraoral occlusal contacts of posterior teeth of 15 subjects were recorded with 8 μm and 100 μm articulating paper, respectively, and the marked teeth and buccal bite data were scanned with an intraoral scanner. The virtual dental occlusions were separately determined by buccal bite registration (BBR) method, and 3 new methods, namely segmented tooth registration (STR), occlusal contact areas (marked by 8 μm articulating paper) registration (OCR) and mixing registration (MR) methods. With the intraoral contact areas marked by 100 μm articulating paper set as reference and contact areas of the 4 virtual occlusions as tests, sensitivity, positive predictive value (PPV) and the ratio of overlapping areas were calculated. Kruskal-Wallis test or 1-way ANOVA was used to analyse the difference among groups. The sensitivity ranged from 0.69 to 0.94 and the PPV from 0.67 to 0.90. Sensitivity of OCR group and PPV of STR and OCR groups were different from that of BBR group at overlapping threshold of 50% (P = .028, .028 and .006). There was statistical difference of the ratio of overlapping areas over reference areas, and the values of STR and OCR groups were higher than that of BBR group (P = .045 and .021). The ability of STR and OCR methods to construct virtual intercuspal occlusion was better than BBR method.