A Clinical Application of Cone-beam CT for Surgical Navigation System

Abstract

A navigation system has recently been applied to dental implant placement. CT data obtained from helical CT have been employed for the navigation system in many cases; however, there have been no reports on the compatibility with some kinds of conebeam CT. Therefore, in this study, implant placement was performed by applying cone-beam CT slice data (3DX Multi-Image Micro CT; Morita Corporation) to the IGI navigation system (IGI; DenX Advanced Dental Systems Ltd.).The patient was a 32-year-old male with lower second premolar absence. Bone morphology in the lower second premolar region was narrow. CT was taken by 3DX, and slice data obtained were converted to DICOM. These data were reversed upside down on a computer, and subsequently transferred to the navigation system. Using the navigation system, 3-dimensional implant placement planning was performed with considering the bone morphology and position of the superstructure. The implant position at the preoperative planning was almost in accordance with the realized position, and an all-ceramic crown was inserted as the super-structure.
Implantation using a navigation system was considered useful, particularly in areas with anatomically complex bone morphology. Furthermore, it was found that data processing was necessary to apply 3DX slice data to the IGI navigation system.