مقایسه تفاوت لندمارک های آناتومیک دو تکنیک رادیوگرافی لترال سفالومتری دیجیتال و معمولی به روش ترسیم دستی در جمجمه های انسانی

Background and purpose: digital radiography has led to many improvements in radiology.despite many advantages there are different ideas in determining anatomical landmarks which results insome errors in cephalometric analyses. the aim of this study was to determine the degree of identificationdifferences of anatomical landmarks by conventional and digital lateral cephalometric techniques usingmanual tracing of human skulls.material and methods: this descriptive-analytical study was conducted in 17 cases of humanskulls in which metal radiopaque markers were attached to 9 landmarks as follows: n, s, ans, pns, a,b, pog, the most inferior point of lower mandibular border, and go. conventional and digital lateralcephalograms were obtained from each skull with and without markers. the two cephalograms withoutmarkers were traced for landmarks by three orthodontists. any difference between these landmarks andthose of cephalograms with markers, were recorded and analyzed by student t-test.results: the level of differences in s point was not statistically significant along both x and ycoordinates. the measurement differences for the ans and pns points obtained by both radiographicmethods were significant along the x coordinate but not significant along the y coordinate. also, themeasurement differences for the most inferior point of lower mandibular border, a, b, and go pointsalong both x and y coordinates were observed to be statistically significant. the measurement differenceobtained for the pog point was significant along the y coordinate and non-significant along the xcoordinate.conclusion:the difference in landmark identification between the two digital and conventionallateral cephalometric techniques was statistically significant for some points on both dimensions,however, the difference was not clinically significant.