Highly effective techniques in computerized dental tissue morphometry

Abstract

The effectiveness of computer-aided morphometry is greatly dependent on the capabilities of the software platforms, but the literature provides only information about the measurement methods and their medical interpretation. The purpose of our work is to create a link between the technical algorithm and the medical significance, by a detailed description of measurement procedures, accompanied by the interpretation of their results. The developed techniques operate at a pixel level, by deriving a full benefit from the computational resources available in the modern software environments for image processing. The approach is built on three illustrative cases, formulated in a large sense, so as to cover classes of general problems, referring to cellular entities and tubular structures in cross and longitudinal section. Specimens belonging to the dentin-pulp complex were chosen, because they permit a quantitative analysis for each morphological element, as well as comparative discussion. With appropriate adaptations of the procedures, the measurements of other types of normal and pathological tissues can be analogously addressed. The design, implementation and exploitation of our procedures are supported by specific references to the use of an image analysis system (Zeiss KS400). The algorithmic background remains valid (except for some possible minor changes) when similar software is used. Consequently, the results and their interpretations, prove the importance of the numerical analysis in automating the quantitative evaluation of the structural features.