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Introduction The aim of this study was to examine the root canal system morphology of mandibular incisors by means of micro–computed tomographic imaging. Methods The root canal configuration, physiological foramina, frequency of accessory and connecting canals, and the size and shape of the physiological foramina of 125 mandibular incisors were investigated by means of micro-CT and 3-dimensional imaging software. Root canal configuration of the coronal, middle, and apical thirds and the physiological foramina number are described by a 4-digit system code. Results The most frequent root canal configurations were 1-1-1/1 (56%), 1-2-1/1 (17.6%), and 1-1-1/2 (10.4%); 9 additional different root canal configurations were observed. Single-rooted incisors showed in 80% 1, in 16% 2, and in 4% 3 physiological foramina, respectively. Accessory canals were found in only 13.6% of the investigated teeth. Connecting canals were observed in 36% of the sample, most often in root canal configurations 1-2-1/1 (12.8%) and 2-2-1/1 (7.2%). The morphologic dimensions of a total of 146 physiological foramina were measured. Their mean wide and narrow diameters were 0.24 mm (standard deviation = 0.1 mm) and 0.23 mm (standard deviation = 0.08 mm) when only 1 physiological foramen was present. The physiological foramen shapes observed were oval (56%), round (28.8%), and irregular (15.2%). Conclusions The study provides detailed information about the root canal morphology of anterior teeth in a German population. Within the limitations of the study, the authors recommend according to results obtained in this investigation a final physiological foramen preparation size of ISO 30-35; yet, such a decision should be carefully considered on an individual basis.

Purpose. To validate a small, easy to use and cost-effective augmented marker-based hybrid navigation system for peri-acetabular osteotomy surgery.Methods. A cadaver study including 3 pelvises (6 hip joints) undergoing navigated PAO was performed. Inclination and anteversion of two navigation systems for PAO were compared during acetabular reorientation. The hybrid system consists of a tracking unit which is placed on the patient’s pelvis and an augmented marker which is attached to the patient’s acetabular fragment. The tracking unit sends a video stream of the augmented marker to the host computer. Simultaneously, the augmented marker sends orientation output from an integrated inertial measurement unit (IMU) to the host computer. The host computer then computes the pose of the augmented marker and uses it (if visible) to compute acetabular orientation. If the marker is not visible, the output from the IMU is used to update the orientation. The second system served as ground truth and is a previously developed and validated optical tracking-based navigation system.Results. Mean absolute difference for inclination and anteversion (N = 360) was 1.34 degrees and 1.21 degrees, respectively. The measurements from our system show a very strong correlation to the ground-truth optical tracking-based navigation system for both inclination and anteversion (0.9809 / 0.9711).Conclusion. In this work we successfully demonstrated the feasibility of our system to measure inclination and anteversion during acetabular reorientation.

To develop a hybrid augmented marker-based navigation system for acetabular reorientation during peri-acetabular osteotomy (PAO). The system consists of a tracking unit attached to the patient’s pelvis, augmented marker attached to the acetabular fragment and a host computer to do all the computations and visualization. The augmented marker is comprised of an external planar Aruco marker facing toward the tracking unit and an internal inertial measurement unit (IMU) to measure its orientation. The orientation output from the IMU is sent to the host computer. The tracking unit streams a live video of the augmented marker to the host computer, where the planar marker is detected and its pose is estimated. A Kalman filter-based sensor fusion combines the output from marker tracking and the IMU. We validated the proposed system using a plastic bone study and a cadaver study. Every time, we compared the inclination and anteversion values measured by the proposed system to those from a previously developed optical tracking-based navigation system. Mean absolute differences for inclination and anteversion were 1.34 ( $$\pm \,1.50$$ ) and 1.21 ( $$\pm \, 1.07$$ ) $$^\circ $$ , respectively, for the cadaver study. Mean absolute differences were 1.63 ( $$\pm \,1.48$$ ) and 1.55 ( $$\pm \,1.49$$ ) $$^\circ $$ for inclination and anteversion for the plastic bone study. In both validation studies, very strong correlations were observed. We successfully demonstrated the feasibility of our system to measure the acetabular orientation during PAO.