RT Journal Article SR Electronic T1 Alveolar bone density and its clinical implication in the placement of dental implants and orthodontic mini-implants JF Saudi Medical Journal JO Saudi Med J FD Prince Sultan Military Medical City SP 684 OP 689 DO 10.15537/smj.2016.6.14274 VO 37 IS 6 A1 Naif N. Almasoud A1 Nagaraju Tanneru A1 Hesham F. Marei YR 2016 UL http://smj.org.sa/content/37/6/684.abstract AB Objectives: To assess the bone density in maxilla and mandible in dentate and edentulous patients in Saudi population.Methods: This study involved a retrospective analysis of cone beam CT images of 100 patients (50 male and 50 female) who have come to College of Dentistry, University of Dammam, Dammam, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia between January 2014 and 2015. Using the bone density option in the Simplant software, the Hounsfield unit (HU) was calculated at the edentulous sites. While for dentate sites, a region of interest was selected coronally at 3-5 mm to the root apex using I-CAT vision software. The densities of the buccal bone and cancellous bone were measured at interradicular areas of a specific teeth.Results: The highest bone density at the edentulous sites was at the mandibular anterior region (776.5 ± 65.7 HU), followed by the mandibular posterior region (502.2 ± 224.2 HU). Regarding the dentate sites, the highest bone density was at the buccal cortical plate of the lower incisor teeth (937.56 ± 176.92 HU) and the lowest bone density was at the cancellous bone around the posterior maxillary teeth (247.12 ± 46.75 HU).Conclusion: The alveolar bone density at dentate and edentulous sites in our population is generally lower than the norm reference density of other populations, which dictates the need for quantitative assessment of bone density before implants and mini-implants placement.