Accuracy of 4 digital scanning systems on prepared teeth digitally isolated from a complete dental arch

Abstract

Statement of problem: The accuracy of digital scanners is acceptable for scanning a complete dental arch. However, whether that accuracy is sufficient for only 1 tooth within the dental scan of a complete dental arch is unclear.

Purpose: The purpose of this in vitro study was to evaluate and compare the accuracy of 4 intraoral scanners on a complete dental arch and on prepared teeth digitally isolated from the digital scan in terms of trueness and precision.

Material and methods: A model of a complete dental arch with tooth preparations was scanned 40 times with each of the 4 digital scanners. Their accuracy was evaluated by using 3-dimensional (3D) software to compare the test models with a highly accurate reference model. The data were digitally processed to isolate the prepared teeth and evaluate them in the same way. The data were statistically analyzed using the Levene test and the Tamhane's T2 test (α=.05).

Results: In scans of a complete dental arch, the True Definition scanner had the best accuracy values, followed by TRIOS, iTero, and Omnicam. For prepared teeth isolated from the dental arch, both True Definition and TRIOS had the best values, followed by iTero and Omnicam.

Conclusions: In both long-span scans of the complete dental arch and isolated prepared teeth, the True Definition scanner had the greatest accuracy, closely followed by TRIOS.