On the use of the electromechanical impedance technique for the assessment of dental implant stability: Modeling and experimentation

Abstract

We propose the electromechanical impedance technique to monitor the stability of dental implants. The technique consists of bonding one wafer-type piezoelectric transducers to the implant system. When subjected to an electric field, the transducer induces structural excitations which, in turn, affect the transducer’s electrical admittance. The hypothesis is that the health of the bone surrounding the implant affects the sensor’s admittance. A three-dimensional finite element model of a transducer bonded to the abutment of a dental implant placed in a host bone site was created to simulate the progress of the tissue healing that occurs after surgery. The healing was modeled by changing the Young’s modulus of the bone–implant interface. It was found that as the Young’s modulus of the interface increases, the electromechanical characteristic of the transducer changes. Then, the model was used to interpret the experimental results relative to a sensor bonded to an abutment screwed to implants secured into bovine bone samples. The results show that the electromechanical impedance technique can be used to monitor the stability of dental implants although more research is warranted to examine the repeatability of the methodology and its advantage with respect to existing commercial systems.

Application of structural health monitoring technologies to bio-systems: current status and path forward

“…Ribolla et al [3] extended the EMI technique to monitor the healing of a dental implant after a typical surgery. A threedimensional finite element model of a transducer bonded to the abutment of a dental implant was first employed to simulate the tissue healing and study the possibility of employing PZT patches numerically.…”

Modeling the electromechanical impedance technique for the assessment of dental implant stability

“…It consisted of a 2 Â 2 Â 100 m 3 PSI-5A4E transducer, from Piezo Systems, Inc., bonded to a 2 Â 2 Â 100 mm 3 aluminum beam. The material properties of the transducer are the same of those presented in Table 14 of La Malfa Ribolla et al (2015), whereas for the aluminum we considered density and Young's modulus equal to 2700 Kg m À 3 and 70 GPa, respectively. The Solid-5 element, a 3D couple-field brick with 8 nodes, and the Solid-185, a 3D structural brick with 8 nodes, were used for the PZT and the metallic beam, respectively (ANSYS, 2009b).…”

“…Hereinafter they are indicated as the superstructure and superstructureinterface-bone, respectively. We modeled the NobelReplace Tapered Groovy (⌀4.3 Â 13 mm 2 ) implant and the permanent prosthetic abutment by Nobel Biocare because they were used recently (La Malfa Ribolla et al, 2015). Fig.…”

“…In the study presented in this paper, we complemented the experiments we conducted recently (Boemio et al, 2011;La Malfa Ribolla et al, 2015;Tabrizi et al, 2012), with a numerical analysis of the biomechanical osseointegration process monitored with the EMI technique. The electromechanical coupling between a PZT patch and a host generic structure was first validated by comparing our finite element (FE) model with analytical or literatureknown solutions.…”

“…As the quest for a perfect biomechanical method is not limited to the improvements of the two commercial systems, some authors have proposed alternative approaches based on quantitative ultrasounds (De Almeida et al, 2007;Mathieu et al, 2011aMathieu et al, , 2011bVayron et al, 2015) or the electromechanical impedance (EMI) (Boemio et al, 2011;La Malfa Ribolla et al, 2015;Tabrizi et al, 2012). The latter technique consists of bonding one wafer-type lead zirconate titanate transducer (PZT) to the implant or the abutment to be monitored and of measuring the electrical characteristics of the transducer which are related to the mechanical characteristic of the host structure.…”