Accuracy of Implant Placement Position Using Nondental Open‐Source Software: An In Vitro Study

Abstract

Purpose To evaluate the accuracy of implant placement position using two different dental implant planning software. Materials and Methods A set of Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine (DICOM) files from a cone beam computed tomography of a patient missing maxillary right first premolar was used. Implant planning was done using two open‐source programs: A nondental 3D Slicer/Blender (3DSB) software and a commercial dental implant treatment planning program: Blue Sky Plan 4 (BSP4). An intraoral scan of the same patient was used to create a standard tessellation language (STL) file of the maxillary arch and later printed into 20 identical casts. Ten surgical guides were printed for each group as well. A dental implant (3.8 mm × 12 mm, Biohorizons) was placed into each cast using fully guided surgical protocol. The horizontal displacements at the implant cervical platform and at the implant apex as well as the angulation displacements were measured using digital scanning of the implant scan bodies and were analyzed using a 3D compare software. Statistical analyses were conducted (⍺ = 0.05) using t‐test and F‐test to examine differences in trueness and precision, respectively. Results The average horizontal deviations for the platform and the apex, respectively, were 0.33 ± 0.12 mm and 0.76 ± 0.30 mm for 3DSB and 0.44 ± 0.21 mm and 0.98 ± 0.48 mm for BSP4. The average angulation deviations for 3DSB and BSB4 were 2.34 ± 0.93° and 3.07 ± 1.57°, respectively. There were no statistical differences in the means (t‐test) of the platform, apex, and angulation deviations (p = 0.16, p = 0.19, and p = 0.18, respectively). There were statistical differences in the variances (F test) of the platform (p = 0.043) and angulation (p = 0.049) deviations but not the apex (p = 0.059) deviations. Conclusions The combination of nondental open‐source software, 3D Slicer/Blender can be used to plan implant guided surgery with an accuracy similar to commercial dental software with slightly higher precision. Open‐source nondental software can be considered as an alternative in dental implant treatment planning and guided surgery.

Optimization of Prosthodontic Computer‐Aided Designed Models: A Virtual Evaluation of Mesh Quality Reduction Using Open Source Software

“…The clinician can find multiple free online resources (for example, Reddit, Discord, YouTube, GitHub, etc.) that can assist even in uncommon prosthetic designs 9 . Proprietary software providers generally do not disclose educational resources, provide prompt support services or cater to less common requests 14 …”

“…Meshmixer v3.5 (Autodesk Inc, America) was considered as the standard software (control) based on its recent contributions within prosthetic dentistry 4,16,17 . The open source solutions chosen for evaluation were Meshlab v2020.03 (National Research Council, Italy), 13,17 Blender v2.82 (The Blender foundation, Netherlands) 9,12 and the internet‐based optimization tool SculptGL v1.0 (Stephane Ginier, Canada; https://stephaneginier.com) 18 . The software were selected based on previously mentioned research within the medical and prosthetic rehabilitation space.…”

“…Larger virtual prostheses such as complete dentures and detailed extraoral maxillofacial prostheses in full resolution would inherently require greater computer storage. Additionally, the high computational power required to work on such models may not be present on the average clinician's computer and only serve as an added deterrent to adopting a digital workflow 9 . This issue has challenged information‐technology developers and engineers for decades aiming to efficiently utilize computer storage space and minimize computer power requirements per task.…”

“…There are various community 12 and project 13 driven software tools which carry out computer‐aided designing for free. Such tools are often freely licensed and labelled as “free and open source software” (FOSS) or simply “open source.” 14 As demonstrated in the past, such software are quite capable of carrying out prosthodontic treatment planning and have been proposed as accurate alternatives 9,15 . Some of these open source software have mesh optimization as a built‐in feature.…”

Herramientas digitales para la obtención de registros, posicionamiento y articulación virtual de modelos

“…Para visualizar los registros STL obtenidos de la digitalización, estos se deben importar a softwares de diseño asistido por computador ("computer aided design") -de ahora en adelante CAD. Existen una variedad de opciones de softwares CAD en el mercado, pero por fines prácticos sólo serán abordados softwares de diseño para uso clínico y que posean módulos de articulación, los cuales serán divididos en programas de licencia adquirida y programas de acceso gratuito u Open Source 19 .…”