Dental Arch of Children in Normal Occlusion: Methods of Mathematical Analyses

The development of human dentition from adolescence to adulthood has been the subject of extensive stud by numerous dentists, orthodontists and other experts in the past. In recent years, substantial effort has been evident in the field of mathematical analysis of the dental arch curve, particularly of children from varied age groups and diverse ethnic and national origins. The proper care and development of the primary dentition into permanent dentition is of major importance and the dental arch curvature, whose study has been related intimately by a growing number of dentists and orthodontists to the prospective achievement of ideal occlusion and normal permanent dentition, has cluded a proper definition of form and shape. Authors have put forth mathematical models to describe the teeth arch curve in humans. Some have imagined it as a parabola, ellipse or conic while others have viewed die same as a cubic SP-Line. Still others have viewed the beta function as best describing the actual shape of the dental arch curve. Both finite mathematical functions as also polynomials ranging from 2nd to 6th order have been cited as appropriate definitions of the arch in various studies by eminent authors. Each model had advantages and disadvantages, but none could exactly define the shape of the human dental arch curvature and factor in its features like shape, spacing and symmetry/asymmetry, This paper presents key mathematical models and compares them through some secondary research study.