Purpose: To evaluate the influence of using different fabrication techniques, including intraoral scans, CBCT scans of patients' existing dentures, or denture duplicates, on the accuracy of radiographic scan templates. The influence of selecting different segmentation threshold values during reconstruction of CBCT data was also evaluated.
Materials and methods: A reference model was obtained by scanning five pairs of maxillary and mandibular acrylic complete dentures using a desktop laboratory laser scanner (DWOS 7Series, Dental Wings). Test scans were obtained from intraoral scans of dentures, CBCT scans of dentures and denture duplicates reconstructed at different grayscale segmentation thresholds, and a laboratory scan of denture duplicates. The resultant STL scan files were imported to an open source and cloud storage software (Medit Link) for the accuracy measurements by calculating root mean square estimate (RMSE) between reference and test scans. Collected data were then analyzed. Qualitative analysis was also performed using 3D color maps.
Results: The lowest RMSE (352.7) was found with intraoral denture scans. The highest RMSE (1,336.3) was found with the CBCT scans of the denture duplicates at segmentation threshold of -700 grayscale level. Qualitative analysis revealed that the intraoral denture scans exhibited the most homogenous deviation pattern relative to reference lab scans.
Conclusion: Within the limitations of this study, the intraoral scans of the patients' existing dentures resulted in the fabrication of the most accurate radiographic scan templates. The improved accuracy of scan templates fabricated using the intraoral scanners can eliminate the possible laboratory errors associated with the conventional technical procedures as well as reduce the inaccuracies resulting from the image processing and segmentation of CBCT data.