Alveolar process inclination as related to tooth inclination on near normal patients---in three dimensional space

BACKGROUND.;CBCT opens new opportunities for alveolar bone studies by allowing precise measurements of teeth and their alveolar housing. This could provide new insights into the role of tooth and bone geometry in normal occlusions.;PURPOSE.;To determine whether correlations are present between torque of teeth and torque of bone in patients with normal occlusion.;METHODS.;CBCT images of a sample of 76 near-normal cases were acquired. Maxillary and mandibular teeth were digitized. Alveolar process centers were also digitized at each interproximal area. Torque was calculated and compared for all teeth and all interproximal areas. Paired T-tests and Wilcoxon signed rank tests were used to compare (1)right and left measurements (2) bone and tooth measurements. The significance level was adjusted for multiple comparisons with the Bonferonni correction to keep the overall type 1 error at alpha =(0.05/6=0.0083).;RESULTS.;We found that bone and teeth torque values follow similar trends.;CONCLUSIONS.;There are correlations between the inclinations of teeth and the inclinations of bone. This information can be used in addition to crown standards for positioning the entire tooth, crown and root, within bone.