Assessment of two root canal filling techniques through digitalized radiography

Abstract

The quality of the root canal filling is usually assessed by conventional radiography. However, the visual perception can not guarantee that the filling is satisfactory, and therefore, new evaluation methods need to be accomplished, as quantification of the grayscale levels of the image of the root canal filling, measured from the histograms of the programs used to evaluation of digital radiograph. The objective of this study is to evaluate the quality of the root canal fillings through the measurement of the average grayscale levels of the pixels on the digitalized images. Forty upper central incisor teeth were selected, which were filled by cold lateral condensation or Tagger hybrid modified techniques. The results demonstrated a significant difference in the grayscale levels before and after root canal filling (p < 0.0001), but there was no statistically significant difference between the two techniques (p > 0.05).