1 Analytical study of maxillary and mandibular dental arch forms

Abstract

We studied dental arch forms using 62 maxillary and 53 mandibular casts having normal dentition and occlusion selected from 396 pairs of standardized dental study models. We determined reference points on the dental arch and analyzed seven items used for differentiation of arch forms. Six of the selected items were summarized into three principal components for evaluation. We found that most of the maxillary and mandibular arches were round-square in shape. The first component, which represents the curvature of the anterior teeth, showed significant differences between round V-shaped arches and other arch types. We concluded that there was greater variety in the maxillary arches than in the mandibular arches.