Evaluation of factors influence the shade matching quality.

Objectives: The purpose of this study is to evaluate the influence of color education, gender and level of experience on shade matching quality.
Methods: The study is involved 200 dental and 18 postgraduate students, 130 female and 88 male. A lecture on color and color matching in dentistry was given to half of the dental students. Toothguide Training Box (TTB) which is working with Toothguide Trainer (TT) software, was used by all participants to perform all the steps of training procedure and lastly final test was done by the TTB. The test task was to successively match 15 shade guide tabs with the corresponding shade guides. The shade matching score for each participant, which was given by the TT software, was computed as a sum of color differences (∑∆E) between target tabs and selected tabs. Lower ∆E scores and higher TT scores corresponded to better shade matching results and vice versa.
Results: The results are evaluated in terms of experience and final exam results, the mean total scores of post-graduated students in prosthodontics were significantly higher and the mean of ∑∆E scores were significantly lower than 1. and 2. class of dental students (p<0,01). The mean total scores of the educated group was significantly higher and the mean ∑∆E scores of educated group was significantly lower than uneducated group (p<0,01). The number of corrects were significantly higher in educated group (p<0,01). The mean of total score and the mean of ∑∆E, there is no significant difference between genders.
Conclusions: Training about color consept and also the guideline of Vita 3D-Master, provides more successful shade matching for dental professionals.