Abstract
Abstract. 3D imaging techniques, which started to be exact in regard to the current study with photogrammetry, have brought to development of measurement method – automated digital odontometry (aDo) – with wider opportunities in terms of understanding morphological characteristics of human (or, non-human) teeth and dentition. Revealing them through odontometric parameters, not as visual descriptions, as it has been accepted for decades and is widespread till today, digital measurement methods provide for various previously unattainable detailed objective studies including descriptions or comparisons. These types of studies, carried out for dental and anthropological applications, are of high demand in palaeoanthropology, especially in cases of rare combination of finding uniqueness and preservation degree with considerations of unusual morphology. Thus odontological samples from the Upper Palaeolithic Sunghir’ (individual C2) are of particular interest in the current study which is aimed to detect distinctive parameters related to morphological features and to compare the degree of feature expression on antimere teeth and teeth with lower degree of that feature expression.
Highlights
Odontometry has become an integral part of studies related to teeth or dentition in a number of scientific or clinical disciplines, among which the following can be mentioned: biology, anthropology, archaeology and medicine
With regard to the method proposed in the current study – automated digital odontometry – it can run properly only on 3D images of teeth, though there is a background and an existing practice of running measurements on real sections of teeth or their images, both in anthropology and in dental studies (Martin, 1983, Khera et al, 1990, Smith et al, 2012)
The applied odontometric process goes through stages of tooth orientating with subsequent “slicing”, or odontotomy, and measurements on the obtained tooth contours. 3D surface analysis is used at the initial stage for detecting principal morphological structures and setting directions for sectioning procedure according to the estimated characteristics – individual for each measured tooth, general in terms of dental morphology
Summary
Odontometry has become an integral part of studies related to teeth or dentition in a number of scientific or clinical disciplines, among which the following can be mentioned: biology, anthropology, archaeology and medicine (dentistry). There are different approaches to conducting measurement, while the most traditional, established and quite often used even in our days is manual (Taduran, 2012; Peckmann et al, 2015; Song et al, 2017) It has certain limitations, currently odontometry is tending towards methods, based on 3D imaging and image processing techniques. In some cases it brings to application of existing manual methods to digital images (Smith et al, 2009; Sassani et al, 2018), which obviously opens for researcher all general positive features of using computers. With the gradual development of the automated digital odontometry the potential for more profound and objective studies of dental morphology has been revealed
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