Locating the Mandibular Foramen Relative to the Occlusal Plane using Panoramic Radiography

Age-related changes in the location of the mandibular and mental foramen in children with Mongoloid skeletal pattern

“…In younger children, the mandibular foramen was located below the occlusal plane, and at age 9 years there was a significant shift to the level of the occlusal plane. A similar trend was noted by other researchers and was attributed to a pubertal growth spurt (Hwang et al 1990;Ezoddini Ardakani et al 2010;Movahhed et al 2011;Epars et al 2013). …”

“…In Chinese children, the mandibular foramen was below the occlusal plane at age 3 years, and by age 9 years it was at the level of the occlusal plane (Hwang et al 1990). In Iranian children, at ages 9 years (Ezoddini Ardakani et al 2010) and ages 7-8 years in both genders (Movahhed et al 2011), the mandibular foramen was located below the occlusal plane. Above age 9 years, it was slightly below or above the occlusal plane (Ezoddini Ardakani et al 2010), while Movahhed and colleagues observed that at age 9 years in boys the location remained below, while in girls the mandibular foramen was above the occlusal plane.…”

“…Lastly, in a Caucasian population, after age 8.5 years, the mandibular foramen was above the occlusal plane (Epars et al 2013). Researchers postulate that pubertal growth spurts may play a role in the shift from below to at the level of the occlusal plane (Movahhed et al 2011;Epars et al 2013).…”

The mandibular plane: a stable reference to localize the mandibular foramen, even during growth

“…In agreement with most previous studies [6,7,13,26,29], no significant differences were observed between boys and girls. Movahhed and Kanno found a different location of the foramen with sex, but only at the age of 9 years, probably due to the difference in mandibular growth at this age [11,19]. Park [26] established a significant difference in the position of MF between adult men and women in skeletal class III malocclusion.…”

“…and the reference landmarks are sometimes difficult to identify clinically, especially in children [6,[11][12][13][14]. Previous attempts to determine the position of the MF relative to the occlusal plane have mainly been based on dry mandibles [7,15,16] or on 2D radiographs which were deformed (panoramic radiographs [6,[11][12][13][14][17][18][19]) and/or had a high level of anatomical superimposition (lateral cephalometric radiographs [20,21]). Nowadays, the development of 3D computer software combined with computed tomography (CT) allows indisputable data on the mandibular foramen location to be produced [10,[22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29].…”