Assessment of proximal caries lesions through microtomography, cone beam CT and digital radiographs / Avaliação de cáries proximais por meio da microtomografia, tomografia Cone Beam e radiografias digitais

AUTOR(ES)
DATA DE PUBLICAÇÃO

2009

RESUMO

Dental caries is still a great challenge to dentists, manly in proximal surfaces due to its difficult diagnosis. Many types of equipment have been designed to minimize this problem, specially aiming early caries detection. Among all, one of the most used by clinicians is the interproximal radiograph. The International Caries Assessment System (ICDAS) is a clinical evaluation method that is well accepted and used having a good performance not only for in vivo but also for in vitro studies. Cone beam CT (CBCT) is also being assessed in the overall Dentistry, but its performance on early caries detection has not extensively being evaluated. Microtomography (CT) is a new assessment method which is addressed to small specimens and is similar to a miniature version of axial computed tomography, producing images with micrometrical definition. CT is being assessed in dental research to evaluate mineral content of hard tissues, due to its ability to measure precisely the linear attenuation coefficient. The gold standard method to measure early caries lesions is histological method. However, to perform it, its necessary to cut the specimen. This study had the aim to evaluate the ICDAS, digital X-rays with the interproximal technique, CBCT and CT performance for early caries lesions, when compared to histology. ICDAS for proximal surfaces and CT had a positive correlation through the lesions depth. CT had a positive correlation with histology when analyzing lesions depth and the classification relating to the severity of the lesion, although this relation could be better if a better resolution could be achieved. Digital bite-wing radiographs had the best performance among all exams when comparing to CT and histology, similar to what we notice with the ICDAS results. CBCT had the worst results when comparing to CT and histology, but it was still considered a good relation. The best performance was achieved with the association of ICDAS and digital bite-wing radiographs when comparing to histology. The great advantage of CT when compared to other validating methods to evaluate dental caries is that it doesnt destroy the specimens, it gives tridimensional and isotropic information, making possible to use the specimens again, without losing inner properties.

ASSUNTO(S)

cone beam computed tomography (cbct) radiografias digitais cárie dentária digital x rays tomografia cone beam (cbct) microtomography international caries detection assessment system (icdas) microtomografia dental caries international caries detection assessment system (icdas)

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