Approach for evaluating the effectiveness of ex vivo root canal instrumentation using microtomography

Endodontic treatment of a tooth involves effective elimination of the infectious process localized in the tooth cavity and root canals. The process of root canal treatment is carried out using specialized rotary instruments (files). In this paper, an approach is proposed for evaluating the effectiveness of root canal treatment using the ProTaper Next file system ex vivo using computed X-ray microtomography and VGSTUDIO MAX 3.5 software. This approach involves comparison of three-dimensional tooth models before and after the endodontic instrumentation procedure, segmentation, calculation of the root canal volume using software according to a specially developed protocol, as well as a study of their microgeometry. As an example of using the approach, a study of the features of root canal instrumentation of two- and three-rooted human molars is presented. The developed approach demonstrated high effectiveness in the process of examining human teeth, while the endodontic procedure was effective for both two- and three-rooted molars in terms of removing the internal biological content of the canals, which indicates the reliability of the applied method. The developed approach can be applied to evaluate the effectiveness of liquid dental materials and antibacterial solutions used during endodontic treatment of teeth.