Accuracy in dental surgical guide fabrication using different 3-D printing techniques

Accuracy in dental prosthesis plays a significant role. Surgical guides are widely used for accurate positioning of dental implants. Designing of guides using modern software is useful in achieving precision; however, translation of these images into actual fabricated parts can be achieved using Three-dimensional (3-D) printing. Conventionally, guides were fabricated using vacuum forming technique which leads to several dimensional inaccuracies. Computed Tomography (CT) images of patients with missing teeth are modeled to design surgical guide using Computer Aided Design (CAD) / Computer Aided Manufacturing (CAM) software which is then combined with surface scan files in Standard Tessellation Language (STL) formats to design the guide. In this work, surgical guides have been 3-D printed using different technologies like Material Jetting technology (MJT), Vat photopolymerization (VP) and Material extrusion (ME). Depth, diameter, Area and Volume of the printed guides have been calculated using vernier caliper and scan measurements. These dimensions have then been compared with the dimensions obtained from software modeled images. Least error has been found for the guides fabricated using MJT. The experimental work in this paper, hence, suggests MJT be the most preferred printing technique due to its superior accuracy for printing dental prosthesis like aligners, implants, and crowns, etc.