Precision and accuracy of digital smile analysis in removable complete denture

Abstract

Background/aim Digital Smile Design (DSD) software is a beneficial approach to the potential of patient smile enhancement by producing an esthetic treatment plan. This study aimed to evaluate the precision and accuracy of hand calibrated, photo analysis, and DSD method in removable complete dentures and correlate them with different types of denture teeth. Patients and methods This study was conducted on 29 completely edentulous patients selected from the Outpatient Clinic of Prosthodontic Department, Faculty of Oral and Dental Medicine, Badr University, Egypt. Each patient received two sets of complete dentures as follows: the first denture was constructed from a conventional complete denture with cross-linked resin teeth and served as the control group (group I), and the second denture was constructed from conventional complete denture with nanohybrid composite teeth and served as the test group (group II). Each group was further subdivided into three subgroups, according to the different smile analysis techniques performed: subgroup A, hand calibrated method; subgroup B, photo analysis method, and subgroup C, DSD method. Then, precision and accuracy were evaluated for each smile variable. Results Mean absolute difference was calculated between group I and group II for each smile analysis technique, revealing that the least amount of difference between groups was illustrated in the subgroup A followed by subgroup C and finally subgroup B, which revealed the maximum amount of difference between groups ranged from 0.0031 to 0.2623. Cronbach's Α was calculated for group I and group II between each smile analysis technique, revealing that all was less reliable (less accurate), except lower teeth exposure in group II was rather reliable (rather accurate) ranging from 0.023 to 0.784. Conclusion With the respect to limitations of this study regarding individualized anatomical variations and distortion liability of the image, it was concluded that nanohybrid resin composite denture teeth had less deviation (higher precision) than the conventional acrylic resin denture teeth regarding the ratio of different smile parameters with facial proportions.