Construction of virtual intercuspal occlusion: Considering tooth displacement

Area of Science:

• Dentistry
• Digital Dentistry
• Biomechanical Engineering

Background:

• Traditional dental impressions struggle to accurately capture occlusal forces due to tooth displacement and mandibular deformation.
• Accurate virtual intercuspal occlusion is crucial for digital dental restorations and treatment planning.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop and evaluate novel methods for constructing virtual intercuspal occlusion.
• To assess the accuracy of these new methods compared to conventional techniques.

Main Methods:

• Intraoral occlusal contacts were recorded using articulating paper (8µm and 100µm) on 15 subjects.
• Virtual occlusions were created using buccal bite registration (BBR), segmented tooth registration (STR), occlusal contact areas (OCR), and mixing registration (MR).
• Accuracy was evaluated by comparing virtual contact areas to a reference standard using sensitivity, positive predictive value (PPV), and overlapping area ratios.

Main Results:

• The sensitivity ranged from 0.69 to 0.94, and PPV ranged from 0.67 to 0.90 across methods.
• OCR demonstrated higher sensitivity, while STR and OCR showed higher PPV compared to BBR at a 50% overlap threshold.
• STR and OCR methods yielded significantly higher overlapping area ratios than the BBR method.

Conclusions:

• The segmented tooth registration (STR) and occlusal contact areas (OCR) methods offer superior accuracy in constructing virtual intercuspal occlusion.
• These novel digital approaches provide a more reliable representation of natural occlusion compared to the traditional buccal bite registration (BBR) method.