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Statement of Problem: Computer-aided design and computer-aided manufacturing (CAD-CAM) technology has greatly improved the efficiency of the fabrication of dental prostheses. However, the design process (CAD stage) is still time-consuming and labor intensive., Purpose: The purpose of this feasibility study was to investigate the accuracy of a novel artificial intelligence (AI) system in designing biomimetic single-molar dental prostheses by comparing and matching them to the natural molar teeth., Material and Methods: A total of 169 maxillary casts were obtained from healthy dentate participants. The casts were digitized, duplicated, and processed with the removal of the maxillary right first molar. A total of 159 pairs of original and processed casts were input into the Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs) for training. In validation, 10 sets of processed casts were input into the AI system, and 10 AI-designed teeth were generated through backpropagation. Individual AI-designed teeth were then superimposed onto each of the 10 original teeth, and the morphological differences in mean Hausdorff distance were measured. True reconstruction was defined as correct matching between the AI-designed and original teeth with the smallest mean Hausdorff distance. The ratio of true reconstruction was calculated as the Intersection-over-Union. The reconstruction performance of the AI system was determined by the Hausdorff distance and Intersection-over-Union., Results: Data of validation showed that the mean Hausdorff distance ranged from 0.441 to 0.752 mm and the Intersection-over-Union of the system was 0.600 (60%)., Conclusions: This study demonstrated the feasibility of AI in designing single-molar dental prostheses. With further training and optimization of algorithms, the accuracy of biomimetic AI-designed dental prostheses could be further enhanced., (Copyright © 2022 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

Statement of Problem: Reports on digitally fabricated complete dentures are increasing. However, comprehensive evidence-based research on their cost-efficiency and patient-reported outcome measures (PROMs) is lacking., Purpose: The purpose of this systematic review was to compare the cost-effectiveness and PROMs between digitally and conventionally fabricated complete dentures., Material and Methods: An electronic search of publications from 2011 to mid-2023 was established using PubMed/Medline, EBSCOhost, and Google Scholar. Retrospective, prospective, randomized controlled, and randomized crossover clinical studies on at least 10 participants were included. A total of 540 articles were identified and assessed at the title, abstract, and full article level, resulting in the inclusion of 14 articles. Data on cost, number of visits, patient satisfaction, and oral health-related quality of life were examined and reported., Results: The systematic review included 572 digitally fabricated complete dentures and 939 conventionally fabricated complete dentures inserted in 1300 patients. Digitally fabricated complete dentures require less clinical time with a lower total cost, despite higher material costs compared with the conventional fabrication technique. Digitally and conventionally fabricated complete dentures were found to have significant effects on mastication efficiency, comfort, retention, stability, ease of cleaning, phonetics, and overall patient satisfaction, as well as social disability, functional limitation, psychological discomfort, physical pain, and handicap., Conclusions: Digitally fabricated complete dentures are more cost-effective than conventionally fabricated dentures. There are various impacts of conventionally and digitally fabricated complete dentures on PROMs, and they are not better than one another., (Copyright © 2023 Editorial Council for The Journal of Prosthetic Dentistry. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

Statement of Problem: Lithium disilicate (LD) is a popular dental ceramic and has been a focus of dental research. Nevertheless, a quantified literature analysis focusing on the research of lithium disilicate is lacking., Purpose: The purpose of this bibliometric analysis was to review the progress of research into lithium disilicate in dentistry, including the identification of contributing researchers, organizations, countries or regions, journals, and the analysis of high-impact keywords and research trending., Material and Methods: The search was carried out within the topic field of the Web of Science (WoS) database, collecting publications related to LD from between 1996 and 2019. Metadata including the titles, abstracts, keywords, authors, affiliations, countries or regions, and references were extracted. Bibliometric indicators in terms of documents, authors, journals, and keywords were analyzed., Results: Between 1996 and 2019, the dental research on LD trended upward. Scholars in the United States, Germany, Switzerland, and Brazil actively participated in the research on LD, and publications from the United States had the most citations. The Journal of Prosthetic Dentistry and Dental Materials were the major contributing journals. High-impact terms could be categorized into types of restorative material, types of prostheses, and properties or techniques of materials. Co-occurrence and relative normalized citation analysis of keywords highlighted several research interests, such as comparison studies between LD and zirconia, computer-aided design and computer-aided manufacturing (CAD-CAM) techniques, and the performance of complete coverage LD restorations., Conclusions: With the global upsurge in research on lithium disilicate, extensive collaborations and citations have been noted among authors, institutions, and countries or regions. Research hotspots include types of restorative material, types of prostheses, and properties or techniques of materials., (Copyright © 2020 Editorial Council for the Journal of Prosthetic Dentistry. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

Accurate articulator-mounted casts are essential for occlusion analysis and for fabrication of dental prostheses. Although the axis orbital plane has been commonly used as the reference horizontal plane, some clinicians prefer to register the horizontal plane with a spirit level when the patient is in the natural head position (NHP) to avoid anatomic landmark variations. This article presents a digital workflow for registering the patient's horizontal plane in NHP on a virtual articulator. An orientation reference board is used to calibrate a stereophotogrammetry device and a 3-dimensional facial photograph with the patient in NHP. The horizontal plane can then be automatically registered to the patient's virtual model and aligned to the virtual articulator at the transverse horizontal axis level. This technique showed good repeatability with positional differences of less than 1 degree and 1 mm in 5 repeated measurements in 1 patient., (Copyright © 2018 Editorial Council for the Journal of Prosthetic Dentistry. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)