2009 年 43 巻 2 号 p. 129-134
Conventionally, the protrusive check bite method has often been used clinically to measure inclination of the sagittal condylar path on an articulator. This method, however, involves several problems such as instability in determining the inclination. We assessed the ability of a digital six-degrees of freedom mandibular movement analyzing system to measure sagittal condylar path inclination, and compared the results with data generated using two other methods, the protrusive check bite method and the Gnatho-Hexagraph method. We found that the Gnatho-Hexagarph provided a useful means of measuring sagittal condylar path inclination in patients with a large number of missing teeth. We also found that use of the Gnatho-Hexagraph facilitated measurement of the sagittal condylar path inclination simply on the basis of the mouth-opening movement, without requiring measurements during anterior movement. This method is not affected by various problems known to be associated with the conventional protrusive check bite method.