DENTAL IMPLANT IDENTIFICATION THROUGH RADIOGRAPHIC IMAGES SUBTITLE: IDENTIFICATION OF DENTAL IMPLANTS BY X-RAY

Abstract

The identification of dental implants by clinicians may be achieved through morphometric measurements and may be used in the field of forensic dentistry. This study compares the real measurements and the measurement of digital radiography of dental implants to establish their respective correlations with the use of software. The study was performed with six implants from five different manufacturers. All images were obtained using dental films with different angles. Thus, the dental films were measured using a specific software developed. These measurements were then compared with the dental implant measurements. The results showed that the comparison of the measures of the platforms of the implants with the measures of their images at different angulations resulted in no statistical difference. With the horizontal calibration of the images, comparisons between the measurements of the lengths at 20 and 40 degrees and the measurements of the implants were statistically significant. The comparison between implant lengths and their images, performed with the system vertically calibrated, did not reveal a statistically significant difference for any of the three angular comparisons. The software presented accurate measurements in angular variations in relation to the implant, proving that although parallelism is important, it is
not indispensable in the identification of implants.