THE EVALUATION OF THE ACCURACY OF THE 3 DIMENSIONAL DIGITAL MODEL MEASUREMENTS

Purpose: the purpose of this study is to evaluate the accuracy of measurements made on 3-dimensional digital models obtained with a 3-dimensional scanner. material and methods: 125 impressions were taken from an acrylic model (master model) that has 16 teeth, and 125 stone casts were obtained from these impressions. master model and stone casts were scanned with a 3-d model scanner and 126 digital models were obtained. four linear measurements between 4 reference points were measured on stone casts with a caliper and on digital models with computer software. the measurements obtained from the stone casts were subtracted from the measurements obtained from the master model and the same procedure was followed for digital measurements. then the absolute differences of the results were subjected to mann-whitney u test. results: measured deviation calculated for stone casts (0,130 ± 0,11), didn’t differ statistically significantly from measured deviation found for digital models (0,131 ± 0,08), ( p=0,081). conclusion: with in the equipments of this study, measurements made on the stone casts didn’t differ statistically significantly from measurements made on digital models. the accuracy of digital measurements was similar to the measurements on the dental casts.