Techniques to Improve Preoperative Planning Precision for Oral Implantology

Most software systems for oral implantology are based on a multiview approach and often accompanied with a 3-D rendered model. A more integrated and realistic 3-D approach for implant surgery-also guaranteeing correctness in measures-is desirable to gain a deep and sure knowledge of the patient's anatomy before inserting the implants, thus reducing the risk of damaging surrounding structures. We present a 3-D software system where computer graphic techniques have been used to create a smooth and user-friendly 3-D environment to work upon for oral implant planning and simulation. Interpolation of the axial slices is used to produce a continuous radiographic volume and get an isotropic voxel to achieve a correct work context. Freedom of choosing, arbitrarily, during the planning phase, the best cross-sectional plane for achieving correct measurements is obtained through interpolation and texture generation. Correct orientation of the planned implants is also easily computed by exploiting a radiological mask with radio-opaque markers, which is worn by the patient during the computed tomography (CT) scan. Measurement precision was validated considering different scans of a dried human partially edentulous mandible, which was scanned several times, with different angular orientations. The achieved precision (from 0.14% to 0.84% of the absolute value of error) outperforms that using usual DentaScan multiview approaches, and it is even better than the precision previously obtained by the DentalVox tool.