Objective:

To evaluate the difference of the manual cephalometric tracing with the digital tracing on lateral cranial radiographs.

Materials and Methods:

Initially, a pilot study was carried out to calibrate the principal investigator, where 10 radiographs belonging to 5 patients of the Radiology Service of the Dental Center, were analyzed to evaluate the intraclass concordance between the two evaluators. To establish the size of the sample, finally, 78 cephalometric radiographs of 39 patients were analyzed, in which the manual and digital Steiner cephalometric tracing was performed. These radiographs were analyzed on a 1: 1 scale and then the difference of the measurements was evaluated using the univariate analysis, which was determined in the median and interquartile range, separately. In the bivariate analysis, the Wilcoxon rank sign test and paired samples were applied to determine the difference of Steiner’s cephalometric measurements between the cephalometric analysis type. The level of significance was set at p < 0.05 and 95% reliability, respectively.

Results:

There was no significant difference in most of the measurements made manually and digitally. The interincisal angle the only angular measurement in which there was a significant difference when obtaining a result of p = 0.002, while, in the linear measurements, the only measurement in which there was significant difference was in the lower incisor segment - NB with p = 0.005.

Conclusion:

There is no significant difference between manual and digital cephalometric tracing, nevertheless it is important to keep in mind that the simple or population evaluated is reduced to define conclusions.