Lada Shinawatra. Reliability of cephalometric measurements : a comparison of digital image input techniques (scanner vs digital camera) . Master's Degree(Orthodontics). Mahidol University. : Mahidol University, 2006.
Reliability of cephalometric measurements : a comparison of digital image input techniques (scanner vs digital camera)
Abstract:
Digital cameras have been used widely for intraoral photography. Advances in
computer sciences have led to their wide application of digital radiologic imaging
techniques to cephalometric assessment of the craniofacial skeleton. Recently,
computer-aided cephalometric analysis is performed by digitization of a tracing,
digitization of the radiograph or on-screen digitization of scanned radiographic image.
No previous study has reported the use of digital cameras to capture a radiographic
image. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to explore the reliability of
cephalometric measurements by comparing 4 computerized methods (3 utilizing direct
on-screen digitization of the radiographic image captured by 3 digital cameras and 1
utilizing direct on-screen digitization of the radiograph image captured by a scanner)
with the traditional manual method of tracing. Forty lateral skull radiographs were
photographed by 3 digital cameras, scanned by a scanner and traced by hand. Thirtyfour
cephalometric measurements (Mahidol Analysis) were conducted by a
computerized cephalometric analysis program (Ceph Smile plus version 2.0.1) and
manual method. No statistically significant difference (p<0.05) was found in means of
all 34 cephalometric measurements among the 5 methods. When comparing the
manual method with the other 4 methods. Most of the mean differences were less than
0.25 mm and 0.25 degrees. Pearson’s correlation also revealed a very high correlation
(r>0.8) between manual and 4 computerized methods. It can be concluded that the
computerized method (digital camera and scanner) compared favorably with the
traditional manual method. The results demonstrate that either a digital camera or a
scanner is sufficiently accurate to produce digital images for clinical cephalometric
analysis.