Contact Zone Evaluation of Dental Implants Using Digital Photoelasticity
Use of dental implants in case of missing natural dentition is now common in clinical dentistry. The tilted implant configurations, which are inevitable in many clinical situations, are prone to higher stresses. The orientation of implants has a great inf
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Contact Zone Evaluation of Dental Implants Using Digital Photoelasticity M.P. Hariprasad and K. Ramesh Abstract Use of dental implants in case of missing natural dentition is now common in clinical dentistry. The tilted implant configurations, which are inevitable in many clinical situations, are prone to higher stresses. The orientation of implants has a great influence on its structural integrity as high stresses around the implants adversely affect the osseointegration process and eventually fail due to the bone resorption. Hence, complete understanding of such complex systems demand better understanding of the bio-mechanics involved. Photoelasticity, a whole-field optical technique, is the right choice for analysing such implant configurations. Recent advancements in digital photoelasticity make it possible to evaluate isochromatics as well as isoclinic parameters over the entire model domain with considerable accuracy. However, these techniques have not been exploited in the field of implant dentistry and photoelasticity has been mostly used as a visualisation tool. This paper explores the use of modern photoelastic techniques for analysing the stress distribution due to an implant with an inclination of 15 . Further, this work also studies the high stress zones in the coronal region of this angled implant. The isochromatic data is post processed using least squares method for determining the contact parameters such as effective contact length and frictional coefficient. Keywords Digital photoelasticity • Stress analysis • Biomechanics • Implant dentistry • All-On-Four
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Introduction
Implantology is one of the promising areas in dentistry, which poses challenging problems for both clinical practitioners as well as for design engineers. Extensive research done on dental implants has resulted in newer designs and concepts like All-On Four procedure, which has revolutionised the concepts of total rehabilitation in the case of complete edentulism, where the entire teeth is replaced by prosthetics [1]. Complete understanding of such complex systems demand better understanding of the bio-mechanics involved and photoelastic experiments are the right choice for analysing the stress distribution in such implant designs. Photoelasticity can provide whole field information regarding the principal stress difference (isochromatics) and the orientation of principal stresses (isoclinics). With the advancement in image processing techniques and computational efficiency, modern digital photoelasticity [2, 3] is capable of providing rich whole field data for problems with complex specimen shapes. In concepts like All-On Four® procedures, placement of implants in the posterior region of the mandibular arches is often complex owing to the anatomical structure and critical nervous system present in those areas [4, 5]. To circumvent this situation, the distal implants are often tilted posteriorly. However, the inclination with respect to the implant axis is patient specific. In such situations, the position and orientation of
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