Effectiveness of a metal artifact reduction algorithm on the imaging of titanium and zirconium implants: preliminary results

Abstract

Objective

To quantify, in 3 dimensions, the degree of metal artifacts arising from titanium and zirconium dental implants on cone beam computed tomography images, and to evaluate the effectiveness of one metal artifact reduction (MAR) algorithm on reducing the metal artifacts produced by such dental implants.

Study Design

Four titanium- and 4 zirconium-based bone-level dental implants were placed centrally into bovine rib blocks of equal size. The rib blocks were submerged in water and subjected to cone beam computed tomography imaging, before and after implant placement. A postacquisition metal artifact reduction (MAR) algorithm was subsequently applied to the image volumes. The imaged rib blocks before and after implant placement were aligned, and a voxel-wise analysis was conducted to independently quantify the volumes of “light” and “dark” components of the metal artifacts before and after MAR application using FMRIB's Software Library (FSL, Oxford, UK).

Results

The preliminary results do not show a statistically significant reduction in either the “light” or “dark” components of the metal artifacts when the MAR algorithm is invoked for both implant types.

Conclusion

On the basis of the preliminary findings, the application of the MAR algorithm does not effectively reduce metal artifacts originating from titanium and zirconium dental implants. We intend to increase the sample size to align with our earlier work, and re-run the analysis to confirm this result.