In vivo and in vitro digital radiographs of proximal caries yield equally accurate diagnostic results, according to a study in Oral Surgery, Oral Medicine, Oral Pathology, Oral Radiology, and Endodontology (March 2010, Vol. 109:3, pp. 463-467).
Gang Li, D.D.S., Ph.D., and colleagues from the department of oral and maxillofacial radiology at Peking University collected 39 noncavitated teeth from 11 subjects who had part of their upper or lower jaws excised because of a cyst or neoplasm.
Before surgery, radiographs of the teeth involved were taken with the Digora Optime digital imaging system (Soredex). Following extraction, the teeth were mounted on plaster blocks, exposed with the same imaging system, then sectioned for histologic validation of the lesions.
Six observers evaluated the radiographs according to a five-category scale and found no significant differences between digital radiographs taken in vivo and in vitro for diagnosing proximal dental caries (p = 0.286), according to the authors.
"Detection accuracy of proximal dental caries obtained from an in vitro study can be considered to be representative of diagnostic accuracy of proximal dental caries obtained in the real clinical situation," they concluded.
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