Correlation Between Panoramic Mandibular Indices and Fractal Analysis

Objectives: The aim of the present study was to correlate between panoramic mandibular indices and fractal analysis among different age and sex groups. Our null hypothesis was that we will find an inverse relationship between mandibular bone mineral density and fractal dimension
Methods: This is a cross sectional observational descriptive study. A digital panoramic radiographs of 95 subjects were used; 48 females (50.5%) and 47 males (49.5%). The data set was divided into four gender age subgroups including male (25-35) years, male (35-45) years, female (25-35) years and female (35-45) years. Every subject was coded an identifying number and radiographs were measured in random order. Mental Index (MI), panoramic mandibular indices (PMI) and fractal dimension (FD) were measured and calculated from panoramic radiographs.
Results: In this study there was negative correlation between mandibular FD and age. Also a negative correlation was found between FD, PMI and MI. Our study showed no statistically significant correlation between FD, PMI and MI. However, there was a negative correlation between FD, PMI and MI and there was no statistically significant difference between FD in females and males. Binary logistic regression model results showed a positive relation for PMI, so subjects with high PMI or high MI are more likely to be males and vice versa.
Conclusions: Although there were no significant differences between different variables, there is still a weak negative correlation between them. Future research must be done with larger sample size and fixation of multiple variables, also using 3D image instead of 2D may be considered for the future studies. Both PMI and MI were significant predictors of gender.