An accurate and simple method for the measurement of dental composite wear

This study describes a relatively simple mechanical technique for measuring occlusal wear at the margin of dental restorations. The device was essentially a custom profilometer which consisted of a linear variable differential transformer with its core supported by double cantilever springs, a specially shaped stylus, a motor driven microscopic stage, custom computer software utilizing a colour coding to separate differences in slope, and a cross-hair-shaped mouse cursor to differentiate the boundary of wear. Two sets of visual standard stone casts were evaluated. The first set consisted of 17 stone replicas of machined steel dies and the second set consisted of five clinical casts, which have been used to measure the wear of composite restorations by direct vision. The reproducibility found when measuring the stone replicas of the machined steel dies was 2 microns, while, for the clinical standards, it was 16 microns.