Objectives: The aim of the current study is to establish the reliability of linear cephalometric measurements made on mandibles and their respective 3D printed models created from different voxel resolutions from a cone beam CT machine.
Materials and methods: Ten dry mandibles obtained from the Department of Oral Pathology, Radiology and Medicine at The University of Iowa College Of Dentistry were used for this study. All mandibles were scanned on the i-CAT FLX cone beam CT machine (Imaging Sciences International, LLC, Pennsylvania, USA) using voxel resolutions of .30mm, .25mm and .20 mm in a 16cm x 8cm field of view using 360° rotation. The 3D models were reconstructed and saved as .STL files using 3D Slicer software and send to a 3D printer for printing. Two observers measured the 10 mandibles and 30 3D printed models. The measurement were repeated on 50% of the samples after at least one week interval. Cronbach’s alpha and intraclass correlation coefficient were calculated to measure reliability.
Results: Good to excellent interobserver and intraobserver reliability was achieved across most of the measurements. There was no difference in reliability across models made from different voxel sizes.
Conclusion: The current study successfully showed that the reliability of measurements made on 3D printed models of dry skull mandibles created using fused deposition modeling technique using images of different voxel sizes from an i-CAT FLX CBCT machine are valid, reproducible, and reliable and can be used for diagnostic and clinical purposes.