Alveolar Bone Density Change During Orthodontic Treatment
Jui-Ting Hsu
a*, Heng-Li Huang
a, Jian-Hong Yu
a, Ming-Tzu Tsai
b, and Tung-Chieh
Yang
c,
aSchool of Dentistry, College of Medicine, China Medical University, Taiwan
bDepartment of Biomedical Engineering, Hungkuang University, Taiwan
cMetal Industries Research and Development Centre, Taiwan
ABSTRACT
The purpose of this study was to evaluate alveolar bone density changes around the teeth during orthodontic treatment by using dental cone-beam computed tomography (CBCT). Dental CBCT was used to measure the alveolar bone densities around the six teeth (both maxilla central incisors, lateral incisors, and canines) in a 23 years old male, who received orthodontic treatment, for three times: (1) before orthodontic treatment; (2) after 7 months of orthodontic treatment (immediately scanned after the brackets and archwire were removed); (3) after 6 months for wearing orthodontic retainer (immediately scanned after the retainer were removed). The CBCT images were loaded into medical imaging software to measure the alveolar bone density around the teeth. In this study, the bone density is represented in grayscale value. The changes in alveolar bone density around the measured teeth before and after orthodontic treatment were investigated. The experimental results indicated that, compare first and second CBCT scanning, the reduction in bone density around the measured teeth was 20.7% after 7 months orthodontic treatment. However, compare second and third CBCT scanning, the bone density around the measured teeth was increased 23.2%. Though the bone density around the teeth reduced significantly after the application of orthodontic forces for 7 months. The bone density around the teeth can increase back to the original value.
