الفهرس | Only 14 pages are availabe for public view |
Abstract Aim: The purpose of this study was to evaluate the diagnostic accuracy of different advanced radiographical and transillumination methods in the detection of dental crack. Materials and Methods : In this study, a total of 60 extracted human teeth were collected, artificial cracks were created on thirty of them (study group) by repeated thermal cycling using liquid nitrogen, labeled and mixed randomly with the other thirty teeth (control group), then placed in a waxed arch block to simulate the human geometrical patten. Teeth were examined by Fiber Optic Transillumination (FOTI), Light Induced Fluorescence (LIF), Cone Beam Computed Tomography (CBCT), and digital bitewing radiograph. Three observers evaluated the cracks independently and recorded the results respectively. The ROC curve and confidence interval (95%CI) were used to indicate the level of accuracy and diagnostic performance. Results The validity of different techniques and area under the curve (AUC) values showed statistically significant difference between all methods with the highest accuracy for crack detection was the LIF (100%) followed by FOTI (96.7%), then CBCT (91.7%), and the least was for the digital bitewing radiograph (65.0%) with Kappa value for interobserver agreement 0.966 for LIF and FOTI, 0.895 for CBCT, and 0.677 for digital bitewing. Conclusions: Within the limitation of this study, dental cracks can be diagnosed by FOTI, LIF, and CBCT with a high level of accuracy; conversely, the digital bitewing radiograph is considered a poor diagnostic aid in crack detection. |