Development of a Six-Degree-of-Freedom Jaw Movement Analyzer for Masticatory Movement

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Masticatory movement has been considered as functional and physiological and yet acquired, unconscious and habitual. It was difficult to fulfill the measuring requirements with conventional devices.To investigate the functional and physiological movement characteristics of the masticatory movement, it was necessary a high performance measuring device that consider the physiological influence sufficiently to human by the measuring device.In this study a jaw movement analyzer with a capability of measuring the 6-degree-of-freedom below 100 microns with minimum physiological influence to human, as well as a measuring system that is able to detect the functional and physiological movement characteristics of masticatory movements, were developed.The developed 6-degree-of-freedom jaw movement analyzer is composed of jaw movement detecting structure, data processing part and notebook computer.In the development the materials necessary for designing were gathered. Based on these materials the … More basic design was established. Afterwards, the problems were evaluated on the experimental model and a prototype device was constructed, focusing on the detecting structure using a mechanical structure attached between the tooth arches of both maxillary and mandible to investigate the lightness and smoothness of the movement. Also an investigation on the attaching method giving a full consideration on the physiological influence was carried out using pediatric subject measuring a jaw movement on gum mastication.The aim of this study has almost accomplished and the results were presented at the Japanese Society for Stomatoghnatic Function.The future research will be on the development of a system that delivers the diagnostic information of jaw function that dentists want to know in real time on the monitor by placing the detecting structure on human and measure the jaw movement at the dining table.There are still several fundamental problems that must be solved so this research will continue. Less