Voids Evaluation of Bioceramic Sealers With GuttaCore Using Microcomputed Tomography

Objectives: The objective of this study was to analyze the percentage of voids in three bioceramic sealers obturated with GuttaCore in 3D-printed teeth and to evaluate the sealing efficacy of these three bioceramic sealers by using microcomputed tomography.
Methods: Experiments were conducted using twenty 3D-printed upper first premolar teeth (Truetooth replica) which had accessed cavities, and their average lengths were 19.85 mm. After the palatal root canals were prepared using ProTaper Next and Profile Ni-Ti rotary instruments (Dentsply Maillefer, Switzerland) to size #40 taper 0.04, the specimens were divided into four groups: the AH Plus (control group), BC sealer, BC sealer HiFlow, and Endoseal MTA groups and obturated with GuttaCore obturation. All specimens were scanned using microcomputed tomography and the percentage volume of the voids inside and outside the filled sealers (V in and V out) at three different canal depth intervals (2-4 mm, 4-6 mm, and 6-8 mm) void distribution was observed and calculated by using Bruker micro-CT software. The Kruskal-Wallis test was used to determine whether the differences between the four groups were significant. If a difference was significant, the Wilcoxon Rank Sum test was used for post-hoc paired comparisons. SPSS software was used for analysis, and 0.05 was the significance threshold.
Results: The results of Void percentages at 2-4 mm interval in four groups revealed: AH Plus (1.038% ± 1.082 %), BC sealer (0.490% ± 0.446 %), BC sealer HiFlow (0.269% ± 0.097 %), and Endoseal MTA (0.060% ± 0.035 %).
Conclusions: This study indicated that most of the voids were presented near the interface (V out), the V in is very small and not significant different between three bioceramic groups. For the percentage volume of voids between the three sealers and root canal surface, the Endoseal MTA revealed smallest at each three intervals of root.