Background:To evaluate the diagnostic accuracy of different radiographic methods in the assessment of proximal alveolar bone loss (ABL).Materials and Methods:ABL, the distance between cement-enamel junction and alveolar bone crest, was measured in 70 mandibular human teeth – directly on the mandibles (control), using conventional periapical radiography with film holders (Rinn XCP and Han-Shin), digital periapical radiography with complementary metal-oxide semiconductor sensor, conventional panoramic, and cone-beam computed tomography (CBCT). Three programs were used to measure ABL on the images: Image tool 3.0 (University of Texas Health Sciences Center, San Antonio, Texas, USA), Kodak Imaging 6.1 (Kodak Dental Imaging 6.1, Carestream Health®, Rochester, NY, USA), and i-CAT vision 1.6.20. Statistical analysis used ANOVA and Tukey's test at 5% significance level.Results:The tomographic images showed the highest means, whereas the lowest were found for periapical with Han-Shin. Controls differed from periapical with Han-Shin (P < 0.0001). CBCT differed from panoramic (P = 0.0130), periapical with Rinn XCP (P = 0.0066), periapical with Han-Shin (P < 0.0001), and digital periapical (P = 0.0027). Conventional periapicals with film holders differed from each other (P = 0.0007). Digital periapical differed from conventional periapical with Han-Shin (P = 0.0004).Conclusions:Conventional periapical with Han-Shin film holder was the only method that differed from the controls. CBCT had the closest means to the controls.

Background:To compare the diagnostic accuracy of three different imaging systems: Direct digital radiography system (DDR-CMOS), four types of filtered images, and a priori and a posteriori registration of digital subtraction radiography (DSR) in the diagnosis of proximal defects.Materials and Methods:The teeth were arranged in pairs in 10 blocks of vinyl polysiloxane, and proximal defects were performed with drills of 0.25, 0.5, and 1 mm diameter. Kodak RVG 6100 sensor was used to capture the images. A posteriori DSR registrations were done with Regeemy 0.2.43 and subtraction with Image Tool 3.0. Filtered images were obtained with Kodak Dental Imaging 6.1 software. Images (n = 360) were evaluated by three raters, all experts in dental radiology.Results:Sensitivity and specificity of the area under the receiver operator characteristic (ROC) curve (Az) were higher for DSR images with all three drills (Az = 0.896, 0.979, and 1.000 for drills 0.25, 0.5, and 1 mm, respectively). The highest values were found for 1-mm drills and the lowest for 0.25-mm drills, with negative filter having the lowest values of all (Az = 0.631).Conclusion:The best method of diagnosis was by using a DSR. The negative filter obtained the worst results. Larger drills showed the highest sensitivity and specificity values of the area under the ROC curve.

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