Digitization accuracy and scannability of different prosthodontic materials: An in vitro trial

Published:July 18, 2023DOI:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.prosdent.2023.05.032

ABSTRACT

Statement of problem

Digital scanning of different prosthodontic materials is commonplace in contemporary practice. However, the scannability of prosthodontic materials has not been thoroughly investigated.

Purpose

The purpose of this in vitro study was to evaluate the scanning accuracy and measure the unscanned area in a preset time limit of commonly used framework materials.

Material and methods

A mandibular acrylic resin reference dental typodont with 3 teeth, with the central one prepared for a complete coverage crown, was digitized by using a desktop scanner. A complete coverage crown was generated in standard tessellation language (STL) format. Three groups were created from the digital design according to the crown material: milled polyetheretherketone (PEEK), milled airborne-particle abraded titanium, and milled polymethylmethacrylate (PMMA). They were scanned with the desktop scanner to be used as reference files for each group. The intraoral scanner Medit i700 was used to digitize each specimen 10 times (n=10). Using a nonmetrology grade software program, the deviations between the test STL file of the intraoral scanner and the reference STL file of the desktop scanner were assessed by using the RMS values. The unscanned surface area in a preset time limit of 6 seconds (scannability) was assessed. Groups were compared by using 1-way ANOVA followed by the Tukey post hoc test with Bonferroni correction when the results were significant. All tests were 2-tailed (α=0.05).

Results

Regarding deviation analysis, RMS discrepancies were computed, and significant differences in trueness were found (P<.001) among the 3 studied groups. The titanium group had the highest trueness followed by the PEEK and PMMA groups, which were statistically similar (P>.05). Precision differed significantly among the 3 studied groups (P<.001). PEEK was the most precisely scanned material followed by titanium, and the PMMA group had the least precision. Regarding scannability, there were overall significant differences (P<.001). Titanium was the most scannable, followed by PEEK and then PMMA.

Conclusions

Airborne-particle abraded titanium had better trueness and scannability than PEEK and PMMA. However, PEEK was the most precisely scanned material.