In Vivo implant micromovements measuring with 3D Digital Image Correlation (DIC)

Implant stability is one of the principal factors in the clinical success of implant therapy. Research has shown that one of the major causes of falilures in osseointegration is excessive micromovements, althought to date, there is no clinical available method for measuring micromovements. The primary objective of this study was to use a 3D DIC method for clinical full-field tridimensional surface micromovements measurement of endosseous implants. Secondarily, this work aimed to understand the influence of different factors in the occurrence of micromovements, particularly the change in the prosthetic abutments geometry (Standard [SD] and Platform-Switching [PS]). In this study 32 endosseous implants (Camlog Biotechnologies®, Wimsheim, Germany) inserted in rehabilitated patients with two or more adjacent dental implants in the lower posterior jaw, and with two different abutments SD (N=18) and PS (N=14), were used. Micromovement measurements were performed by 3D DIC with two high speed photographic cameras and the video correlation system Vic-3D 2010 (Correlated Solutions®, Columbia, USA), after the application of a bite load of more than 30N, measured with a miniature compression loading cell (Applied Measurements Ltd., Berkshire, UK) and the system design software LabVIEW 2010 (National Instruments®, Texas, USA). Implant stability was also measured clinically in ISQ (Implant Stability Quotient) using the Osstell® ISQ (Osstell® ISQ Integration Diagnostic, Sweden). The results were statistically analyzed with the software IBM SPSS® Statistics 20.0 (SPSS Inc., Chicago, Illinois, USA). The results obtained seem to be correlated with the ISQ values indirectly measured by RFA (Ressonance Frequency Analysis) with the Osstell® ISQ. In conclusion, within the limitations of this study, 3D DIC method is capable to measure dental implants micro-movements, although not being a clinical system. The results obtained show correlation with the RFA system, and Prosthetic abutment geometry did not influence the occurrence of micromovements. Keywords: Implant stability, implant micromovements, platform switching