Development of a lead foil crown delineation technique for implant rehabilitations to generate patient specific finite element model of occlusal loading points

Abstract

Understanding the clinical biomechanical basis of dental implant supported functional rehabilitation of edentulous jaws improves precision, longevity and overall success of a planned treatment. Stress distribution pattern around dental implants is an important determinant for rate of bone resorption around them. During planning the treatment for most prosthetic rehabilitations, the surgeon uses a software to virtually plan the dimension, position and angulation of the implants considering only the quantity of available bone in the area of interest but does not usually consider the strain generated around the implants after prosthetically loading them. We hence hypothesise that dental implants not be subjected to abnormal strain they should be positioned and angulated not only based on volume of bone available but also based on the vector of occlusal load. The virtual FEA model to analyse the stress distribution would hence require alveolar bone with future tooth/ teeth in centric relation to be modelled. This paper proposes a simple innovative technique to develop a 3D FE model of occlusal loading surface by using a radio-opaque malleable lead foil to generate a patient specific FE model. This would greatly minimise modelling errors and also help determine the best position of the dental implant based on both the volume of bone in the CT scan and the results of FE analyses.• Functional rehabilitation using dental implant supported prosthesis needs to be biomechanically analysed to know and understand the stress distribution pattern around the implant.• When teeth (Loading points) are missing, patient specific virtual model of occlusal loading points cannot be generated.• ‘Lead foil crown delineation technique’ helps to generate patient specific 3D model of occlusal surface for load application.