The Bulletín of Kanagawa Dental College.

Vol. 35 No. 2      September 2007

ISSN: 0385-1443      UBIC: 65

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to develop a new curve-fitting method for quantifying both dental and alveolar basal arches and to determine whether particular morphological correlations could exist between these two. Forth-order polynomials were used to represent these arches in 50 adult Japanese volunteers (35 males and 15 females) with a normal occlusion. The best fitted curves with rotation provided an accurate description of arch morphology with the quadratic (second-order) and quartic (forth-order) terms reflecting arch form and the rotational angles (Euler's angles) summarizing positional relations to an Intracranial reference. However, the values of correlations between the polynomial coefficients indicated that there was little similarity between the dental and alveolar basal arch forms or the maxillary and mandibular arch forms. These results suggest that this new curve-fitting method may be useful for quantifying morphology and location of the dental arch, but that the dental arch form cannot be predicted directly from the alveolar basal arch form. Key words: Dental arch I Alveolar basal arch I Polynomial curve.

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