Usefulness and methods of identification of an innovative CT marker

抄録

Improving the reliability of orthodontic surgical simulations and postorthodontic treatment models requires accurately matching the computed tomography (CT) images of craniofacial bone and dental casts. We investigated the usefulness of a novel scanning marker (Marker A) that we devised for the purpose of increasing this accuracy. We compared it with a conventional scanning marker (Marker B) by attaching both of these markers to a dry skull and a maxillary dental cast obtained from the skull and identifying them several times on CT images. We investigated the accuracy of identification of each marker by measuring certain parameters on frontal and lateral images and superimposing these images. For every measurement parameter, there was lesser variation in the measured values with Marker A than with Marker B, with the variation being close to or less than the scanning voxel size. The errors during superimposition were also smaller for Marker A than those for Marker B, with the images being almost identical. These results confirmed that this new scanning marker improves the accuracy of matching the craniofacial bone and dental cast CT images to less than the voxel size, even with current CT accuracy. (J Osaka Dent Univ 2021; 55: 169-177)