Comparison of conventional and digital cephalometric measurement methods

Objective: the aim of this study was to compare intra- and inter-examiner reliability of the measurements obtained from letaral cephalometric radiographs using the conventional and digital methods. material-method: sixty lateral cephalometric radiographs were randomly selected and 5 linear and 14 angular parameters were traced and measured by two examiners using the conventional and digital methods on each radiograph. digital images were obtained by scanning the conventional radiographs. independent-samples t-test was used to compare the mean values of intra-examiner differences. intraclass correlation coefficients (icc) were calculated to determine intra- and inter-examiner correlation. results: both operators were generally consistent in the repeated measurements; however, for one examiner, the difference for nasolabial angle measurements was found to be statistically significant (p<0.05). intra-examiner and inter- examiner repeatabilities of measurements both with the manual and digital techniques showed high correlation coefficients. discussion: the findings showed that the use of computer-assisted cephalometric analysis carried out on scanned images did not increase the measurement error when compared with conventional technique.