Comparison between microcomputed tomography and cone‐beam computed tomography radiologic bone to assess atrophic posterior maxilla density and microarchitecture

Abstract

The aim of this study was to analyze the relationship between bone density obtained by cone-beam computed tomography (CBCT) and morphometric parameters of bone analyzed by microcomputed tomography (μ-CT). An overall of 32 subjects ≤8 mm of bone height were included in the study. One site per patient was randomly selected to obtain bone core. Totally, 27 biopsies were available for μ-CT analysis. In addition, CBCT was taken after positioning a previously fabricated acrylic resin template with a 2-mm-diameter metal rod at the randomly selected implant site to study radiographic bone density (RBD). The relationship between μ-CT and CBCT quantitative variable and RBD was analyzed using Spearman correlation. Positive correlations between BV/TV (r = 0.769, P < 0.001), BS/TV (r = 0.563, P = 0.002), Tb.Th (r = 0.491, P = 0.009), Tb.N (r = 0.518, P = 0.005) and vBMD (r = 0.699, P < 0.001) with RBD were identified. On the contrary, BS/BV (r = -0.509, P = 0.006), Tb.Sp (r = -0.539, P = 0.003) and Tb.Pf (r = -0.636, P < 0.001) were negatively correlated with RBD. Moreover, SMI (r = -0.380, P = 0.050) and DA (-0.245, P = 0.217) were negatively correlated but not statistically significant. This study demonstrated the correlation between radiographic bone density (RBD) and bone density assessed by μ-CT. Therefore, our data supported the use of CBCT as pre-operative tool for implant treatment planning because it is shown to be reliable to assess atrophic posterior maxilla density and microarchitecture.