Novel chairside spectrometer-trained system for measuring the irradiance of light-curing units.

The purpose of this study was to compare the performances of 5 different instruments in measuring the irradiance of light-curing units (LCUs). A novel spectrometer-trained radiometer (CheckUp), 2 conventional chairside radiometers (Bluephase Meter I and Bluephase Meter II), and 2 devices considered to be gold standards for measuring irradiance (an integrating sphere spectrometer and a thermopile sensor) were used to evaluate 7 LCUs. The irradiance of each LCU was measured 10 times with each meter. Data were analyzed using linear regression analysis and a 1-way analysis of variance with Tukey post hoc test (α = 0.05). The mean irradiance values of the LCUs differed significantly depending on which meter was used for measurement (P < 0.05). Bivariate regression analysis demonstrated that the highest correlations in the irradiance values were found between the CheckUp meter and both the integrating sphere (r = 0.980) and the thermopile (r = 0.933). The absolute mean (SD) percentage deviation between irradiance measured by the CheckUp instrument and irradiance measured by the other meters was 7.2% (2.0%) for the integrating sphere, 7.0% (3.6%) for the thermopile, 21.5% (16.1%) for Bluephase Meter I, and 13.1% (7.1%) for Bluephase Meter II. Compared with the 2 conventional chairside radiometers, the CheckUp meter provided the highest correlation with and lowest absolute percentage deviation from the irradiance measured by the gold standard spectrometers.