Reliability and Reproducibility of Manual and Automated Volumetric Measurements of Periapical Lesions

• Automated segmentation is precisely performed with software for dentistry.
• Automated volume measurements present slightly higher precision.
• Manual and automated segmentation are strongly correlated.
• Automated segmentation takes less time to be performed.

IntroductionThe present study aimed to test the reliability and reproducibility of 2 methods: manual and automated segmentation (using a threshold-based region growing algorithm) for measuring the volume of periapical lesions.MethodsA total of 43 cone-beam computed tomographic scans (14 men and 29 women, mean age of 54.6 ± 8.5 years) were analyzed by 3 observers. Intraobserver reproducibility and interobserver reliability were assessed using the intraclass correlation coefficient. Parametric correlation between manual and automated volumetric measurements was performed. In addition, the Student t test was also used to compare the mean time required for manual and automated volumetric measurements.ResultsAutomated segmentation showed slightly higher intraclass correlation coefficient values for all observers. A strong significant correlation was found between manual and automated volumetric measurements performed by the 3 observers. A significant difference in the mean procedure time was also found between both methods (P = .001).ConclusionsWithin the limitations of this study, the present results suggest that automated segmentation with a region growing algorithm is faster and slightly more reliable to calculate the volume of periapical lesions.