Reproducibility of measurements of occlusal contact area obtained with an occlusal examination device

Abstract

We investigated reproducibility of measurements of occlusal contact area obtained with the T-Scan II, which is an occlusal examination device. The subjects were ten males with healthy, complete dentition. We measured the occlusal contact area at the five levels for 25, 50, 75, 90, and 100% maximum voluntary contraction (MVC). Five repetitions were made for each measurement over two days. Reproducibility of the occlusal contact area measurements was evaluated by the single-factor repeated measures analysis of variance, the standard error of measurement and the intraclass correlation coefficient. The most stable measurements were obtained from the second and third clenching tests. The reliability for same-day measurements was higher than that for different-day measurements. In the same-day measurements, the reliability at 25% and 50% MVC was lower than that at the three other clenching levels. For different-day measurements, the reliability for all clenching levels was essentially the same. The average measurements showed better clinical reliability than did single measurements for the same-day and different-day measurements. We found reproducibility for the same-day and different-day measurements of occlusal contact area with the T-Scan II.