Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Estimation of Masticatory Forces for Patient-Specific Stress Analysis of the Human Mandible

2008; Japan Society Mechanical Engineers; Volume: 74; Issue: 743 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1299/kikaic.74.1857

0387-5024

Michihiko KOSEKI, Norio INOU, Koutaro Maki,

Dental Radiography and Imaging

An individual evaluation of mechanical characteristics of a bone provides useful information for diagnoses and treatments of each patient. This paper proposes an estimation method of the masticatory forces using an objective function composed of three criteria : efficiency of muscular activities, moment balance between muscular and biting forces, and reaction forces at condyles. The method is firstly applied to a patient whose jaw has a severe deformity. After examination of effects of the criteria, patient-specific stress analyses are performed using the estimated muscular forces. The analytical result shows no stress concentration and little difference in stress distribution on both left and right sides in spite of the asymmetrical mandibular shape and masticatory condition. Then, the method is applied to another two patients with different mandibular morphologies. The estimated forces of the two patients well agree to the empirical knowledge of the relationship between mandibular shape and muscular forces.