Periodontal disease activity: a development strategy for its investigation by means of accurate 3-dimensional clinical measurement.

The central problem in all previous approaches to clinical assessment of periodontal disease activity is the use of unidimensional measurement, which implies a number of unjustifiable assumptions. In addition, the use of unidimensional probing measurement has established that there are several distinct problems of validity and reliability in currently available techniques. The present paper begins with an analysis of these matters, leading to an approach to accurate clinical measurement of periodontitis in 3 dimensions, with the possibility of future development of a valid system for assessing the nature of disease activity.