Dental Color-Matching Ability: Comparison between Visual Determination and Technology

Background: The choice of the correct color is of paramount importance in esthetic dentistry; however, there is still no consensus on the best technique to determine it. The aim of the present study is to compare the accuracy of a recently introduced colorimeter in shade matching with human vision. In addition, possible variables affecting color-matching by human eye have been analysed. Methods: 18 disc-shaped composite samples with identical size and shape were produced from a composite flow system (Enamel plus HriHF, Micerium): Nine were considered control samples (UD 0-UD 6), and nine were test samples with identical flow composite shade to the control ones. Parallelly, 70 individuals (dental students and dental field professionals) were individually instructed to sit in a Citation: Menini, M.; Rivolta, L.; Manauta, J.; Nuvina, M.; Kovacs Vajna, Z.M.; Pesce, P. Dental Color-Matching Ability: Comparison between Visual Determination and Technology. Dent. J. 2024, 12, 284. https://doi.org/10.3390/dj12090284 Academic Editors: Gildo Santos and Dubravka Knezovi´c Zlatari´c Received: 29 July 2024 Revised: 20 August 2024 Accepted: 30 August 2024 Published: 3 September 2024 Copyright: © 2024 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/). dark room illuminated with D55 light and to perform visual shade matching between control and test discs. An error matrix containing ∆E94 between control and test discs was generated, containing four match-clusters depending on perceptibility and acceptability thresholds. The frequency and severity of errors were examined. Results: The colorimeter achieved a 100% perfect matching, while individuals only achieved a 78%. A higher occurrence of mismatches was noted for intermediate composite shades without a statistically significant difference. No statistically significant differences were reported for age, sex, and experience. A statistically significant difference was present among the Optishade match and the visual determination. Conclusions: The instrumental shade-matching evaluation proved to be significantly more reliable than the human visual system. Further research is needed to determine whether the same outcomes are achieved in a clinical setting directly on patients.