Percentage of the canal area filled by three different calcium silicate filling materials in a 3D printed open-apex tooth model

Introduction.;Teeth with open apices are difficult to obturate and have an increased risk of apical extrusion during obturation. MTA Apexification is a treatment option in these scenarios. The purpose of this study was to quantitatively measure the percentage of the canal area filled by three MTA-type obturation products using a standardized 3-D printed model of an open-apex tooth.;Materials and Methods.;45 identical tooth models were 3-D printed and divided into three groups of 15 to test the three different MTA-type root-filling products. The obturation products compared were ProRoot MTA (PMTA), NeoMTA Plus (NMTAP), and EndoSequence Root Repair Material Fast Set putty (BC-RRM- FSP).;Using a standardized technique, the models were obturated orthograde by a single operator using the three products. After setting, the percentage of the canal area filled by these materials was measured using ImageJ software at the unresected apex, 1 mm apical resection, and 3 mm apical resection levels. The filled canal area was calculated as a percentage of the canal's cross-sectional area and analyzed using a t-test.;Results.;PMTA performed significantly better than the BC-RRM-FSP at the unresected level (p?.05). At both the 1mm and 3mm apical resection levels, PMTA and BC-RRM-FSP performed significantly better than the NMTAP. There were no statistical differences between different levels within each individual product.;Conclusion.;At the apex, PMTA was shown to have more canal area filled. At the 1 mm and 3 mm resections PMTA and BC-RRM-FSP putty had greater percentages of canal area filled than NMTAP.