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Objective: The purpose of this study was to develop a method of accurately quantifying the wear facet, and relating the wear facet size to the forces applied by the Iowa Tooth Wear Machine.
Methods: Ten un-erupted third molars were used for this study. The teeth were mounted in the Iowa Tooth Wear Machine with opposing proximal surfaces. Samples were run with a 0.250mm stroke length for 645,120 cycles under 5 pounds of weight. An optical scanner was used to digitize the initial and final interproximal wear facets. AnSur© software (Regents, University of Minnesota) was used to process and analyze the interproximal surfaces in terms of area (mm2), volume (mm³), and depth (µm).
Results: All samples were subject to identical magnitude and frequency of forces. The results show that there was considerable variation in volume loss between the samples. Results show similar amounts of volume loss in samples 3, 4, 6, 7, 8, 9, and 10 with 1, 2, and 5 showing a considerably greater amount of wear.
Conclusions: The results suggest that there may be other compounding factors involved with facet formation, and the force magnitude and frequency alone does not determine the volume of enamel loss.