A RADIOGRAPHIC STUDY OF MENTAL FORAMEN IN INTRAORAL RADIOGRAPHS

구내방사선사진상의 이공에 관한 연구

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the position and shape of mental foramen in periapical radiographs. For this study, periapical radiographs of premolar areas were obtained from the 200 adults. Accordingly, the positional and shape changes of mental foramen were evaluated. The authors obtained radiographs according to changes in radiation beam direction in periapical radiographs of premolar areas, and then evaluated the positional and shape changes of mental foramen. The following results were obtained: 1. Shapes of mental foramen were observed elliptical(34.3％), round or oval(28.0％), unidentified(25.5％) and diffuse(12.2％) type in descending order of frequency. 2. Horizontal positions of mental foramen were most frequently observed at the 2nd premolar area(55.3％), the area between the 1st premolar and 2nd premolar(39.6％), the area between the 2nd premolar and 1st molar(3.4％), the 1st premolar area(1.0％), the area between the canine and 1st premolar(0.7％) in descending order of frequency. 3. Vertical positions of mental foramen were most frequently observed at the inferior to apex(67.1％), and at apex(24.8％), overlap with apex(6.4％), superior to apex(1.7％) in descending order of frequency. 4. Shapes of mental foramen were more obviously observed at the upward 10° positioned periapical radiographs. And according to the changes of horizontal and vertical position, they were observed similar to normally positioned periapical radiographs.