Clinical Study of the Influence of Ambient Lighting Conditions on the Mesh Quality of an Intraoral Scanner.

PURPOSE

To compute the effect of ambient light illuminance settings on the mesh quality of the digital scans accomplished in a subject.

MATERIAL AND METHODS

A subject was recruited. The maxillary dentition did not present any dental restoration. A prosthodontist recorded different complete-arch maxillary digital scans by using an IOS (TRIOS 3; 3Shape) under 4 different illuminance light conditions namely chair light at 10,000-lux illuminance (CL group), room light at 1000-lux illuminance (RL group), natural light at 500-lux illuminance (NL group), and no light at 0-lux luminosity (ZL group). Ten digital scans for each group were consecutively obtained. Mesh quality was examined using the iso2mesh MATLAB package. Shapiro-Wilk test revealed a nonnormally distributed data. Kruskal-Wallis one-way ANOVA, and pair-wise comparison were selected to evaluate the data (α = 0.05).

RESULTS

Significant differences in mesh quality values were measured among the groups (p < 0.001). Pair-wise comparisons revealed that significant difference was found across all pairs of lighting groups, except for the RL-NL comparison (p = 0.279). However, the CL condition obtained the highest mean values, followed by RL and NL groups, and the lowest mean values were obtained on the ZL lighting condition.

CONCLUSIONS

Chair light at 10,000-lux illuminance condition is recommended to maximize the quality mesh values of the IOS system tested (TRIOS 3; 3Shape).