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Method Article
In order to understand the spatial development of polymerization shrinkage stress in dental resin-composite restorations, Digital Image Correlation was used to provide full-field displacement/strain measurement of restored model glass cavities by correlating images of the restoration taken before and after polymerization.
Polymerization shrinkage of dental resin composites can lead to restoration debonding or cracked tooth tissues in composite-restored teeth. In order to understand where and how shrinkage strain and stress develop in such restored teeth, Digital Image Correlation (DIC) was used to provide a comprehensive view of the displacement and strain distributions within model restorations that had undergone polymerization shrinkage.
Specimens with model cavities were made of cylindrical glass rods with both diameter and length being 10 mm. The dimensions of the mesial-occlusal-distal (MOD) cavity prepared in each specimen measured 3 mm and 2 mm in width and depth, respectively. After filling the cavity with resin composite, the surface under observation was sprayed with first a thin layer of white paint and then fine black charcoal powder to create high-contrast speckles. Pictures of that surface were then taken before curing and 5 min after. Finally, the two pictures were correlated using DIC software to calculate the displacement and strain distributions.
The resin composite shrunk vertically towards the bottom of the cavity, with the top center portion of the restoration having the largest downward displacement. At the same time, it shrunk horizontally towards its vertical midline. Shrinkage of the composite stretched the material in the vicinity of the “tooth-restoration” interface, resulting in cuspal deflections and high tensile strains around the restoration. Material close to the cavity walls or floor had direct strains mostly in the directions perpendicular to the interfaces. Summation of the two direct strain components showed a relatively uniform distribution around the restoration and its magnitude equaled approximately to the volumetric shrinkage strain of the material.
Resin composites are widely used in restorative dentistry because of their superior aesthetics and handling properties. However, despite being bonded to the tooth tissues, the polymerization shrinkage of resin composites remains a clinical concern as the shrinkage stress developed may cause debonding at the tooth-restoration interface1-2. Consequently, bacteria can invade and reside in the failed areas and result in secondary caries. On the other hand, if the restoration is well bonded to the tooth, the shrinkage stress may cause cracking in the tooth tissues. Either of these failures will jeopardize the service life of the dental restoration, which will be subjected to a large number of cycles of thermal and mechanical loading.
Measurement of polymerization shrinkage strain and stress has thus become indispensable in the development and evaluation of dental resin composites3-4. Various measuring techniques or methods have been developed5-11 with the main purpose of providing a simple setup for measuring the shrinkage behavior of resin composite materials reliably. While the measurements they provide may be sufficient for comparing the shrinkage behaviors of different materials, they do not help in the understanding of how and where shrinkage stress develops in actual restored teeth. Specifically, a question of great interest is how the cavity walls constrain the shrinkage of composites and leads to the creation of shrinkage stress in dental restorations12. Note that, to create shrinkage stress, part of the shrinkage strain of the resin composite has to be converted into tensile elastic strain. It would therefore be useful if this component of the strain in the restoration can be measured. Recently, the optical full-field strain-measuring technique, Digital Image Correlation (DIC), has been applied to the measurement of free shrinkage of resin composites as well as material flow in dental restorations13-15. The basic idea of DIC is to track and correlate visible patterns on the sample surface from sequential images taken during its deformation whereby the displacement and strain fields over that surface can be determined. Full-field measurement is one of the main advantages of the DIC method, which is especially useful in observing non-uniform deformation and strain patterns13. In this study, DIC was used to uncover the strain patterns in dental resin composite restorations, with the aim of understanding the development of shrinkage stress and identifying potential sites for debonding. This information is not directly available in the works cited above14-15, which only measured the displacement of the restoration due to polymerization shrinkage. The measurement was conducted using models that simulated teeth with mesial-occlusal-distal (MOD) tooth cavities as an attempt to replicate the stress or strain in real dental restorations. Although the use of real teeth is more anatomically representative, the disadvantage of that is the significant inherent differences among teeth in anatomy, mechanical properties, degree of hydration as well as invisible internal defects14 that result in large variations in the results. To overcome such a drawback, some studies have tried to standardize tooth samples by grouping them in terms of the buccal size16 or replaced the teeth altogether with models of a surrogate material17. For example, aluminum models which have a similar Young’s modulus to enamel (69 and 83 GPa, respectively) have been employed in shrinkage stress measurement, with the level of shrinkage stress being indicated by the cusp deflection17. In this study, silica glass models (cavities) were used instead because the material also has a similar Young’s modulus (63 GPa) to human enamel and, as it is transparent, any debonding or cracking in the specimens can be readily observed.
Note: Three dental resin composites were studied using the glass cavities: Z100, Z250 and LS, as listed in Materials List. Among them, LS is known to be a low-shrinkage resin composite with a volumetric shrinkage of around 1.0%, much lower than those of Z250 and Z100 (~2% and ~2.5%, respectively)18-19. The equipment and other materials used in this study are also given in Materials List.
1. Model Cavity Preparation
2. Cavity Filling with Resin Composite
3. Surface Painting
4. Sample Mounting, Curing, and Photographing
5. Image Analysis with DIC Software
Three specimens were tested for each material. After each test, the specimen was examined by eyes or, if necessary, using a microscope. No apparent debonding at the “tooth-restoration” interface or cracking was found.
The resolution of the pictures was 1,600 x 1,180 pixels with a pixel size of 5.8 mm. With a subset window size of 32 pixels, the spatial resolution of the displacement distributions was around 186 mm.
Figure 3 shows a typic...
The use of glass cavities with the same shape and dimensions for shrinkage strain measurement was to minimize the variation in results due to differences in size, anatomy and material properties of natural human teeth. In addition, the fused silica glass used in this study has a similar Young’s modulus to enamel, making it a suitable simulant material for natural teeth as far as mechanical behavior is concerned21-22. Although in real tooth restorations, the resin composite is mostly bonded to dentin rath...
The authors declare that they have no competing financial interests.
This study was supported by the Minnesota Dental Research Center for Biomaterials and Biomechanics (MDRCBB).
Name | Company | Catalog Number | Comments |
Dental composite Z100 | 3M ESPE | N362979 | volume shrinkage ~ 2.5%, Young's modulus ~ 14 GPa |
Dental composite Z250 | 3M ESPE | N326080 | volume shrinkage ~ 2.0%, Young's modulus ~ 11 GPa |
Dental composite LS | 3M ESPE | N240313 | volume shrinkage ~ 1%, Young's modulus ~ 10 GPa |
Ceramic Primer | 3M ESPE | N167818 | Rely X |
LS System Adhesive | 3M ESPE | N391675 | Adhesive for compoiste LS |
Adper Single Bond Plus | 3M ESPE | 501757 | Adhesive for compoiste Z100 and Z250 |
Glass rod | Corning Inc. | Pyrex 7740 borosilicate | |
Curing light | 3M ESPE | Elipar S10 | |
White paint | Krylon Product Group | Indoor/Outdoor, Flat white | |
Charcoal powder | Sigma Aldrich, Co. | BCBH6518V | Fluka activated charcoal |
CCD camera | Point Grey Research, Inc. | Point Grey Gras-20S4C-C |
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