Accuracy assessment of three-dimensional abutment tooth data construction using swept-source optical coherence...

Area of Science:

• Dentistry
• Optical Imaging
• Biomedical Engineering

Background:

• Widely used intraoral scanners (IOSs) have limitations in capturing subgingival finish lines due to surface-only data extraction.
• Swept-source optical coherence tomography (SS-OCT) offers high-speed, high-resolution cross-sectional imaging of hard and soft tissues, potentially overcoming IOS limitations.

Purpose of the Study:

• To fabricate crowns using SS-OCT 3D images as a proof-of-principle for its application in IOSs.
• To evaluate the fit accuracy of crowns fabricated using SS-OCT compared to a conventional IOS.

Main Methods:

• Crowns were fabricated from 3D images scanned by both SS-OCT and TRIOS3 (a conventional IOS), with each scanned three times.
• The same digital workflow was used for crown fabrication for both scanning methods.
• Internal gaps were measured using scanning electron microscopy, and marginal fit was evaluated via microscopy.

Main Results:

• The TRIOS3 conventional IOS demonstrated superior accuracy compared to SS-OCT.
• SS-OCT accuracy decreased with depth due to its occlusal-only imaging direction, impacting marginal precision.
• SS-OCT lacks automatic surface information correction in computer-aided design (CAD) software.

Conclusions:

• While SS-OCT shows potential for dental applications, current accuracy is inferior to conventional IOSs for marginal fit.
• Improvements are needed for SS-OCT, including automatic margin correction, enhanced CAD compatibility, and specialized probes, to improve its precision for abutment tooth measurements.