Clinical Study of the 3D-Master Color System among the Spanish Population

PURPOSE

To study whether the shades of the 3D-Master System were grouped and represented in the chromatic space according to the three-color coordinates of value, chroma, and hue.

MATERIALS AND METHODS

Maxillary central incisor color was measured on tooth surfaces through the Easyshade Compact spectrophotometer using 1361 participants aged between 16 and 89. The natural (not bleached teeth) color of the middle thirds was registered in the 3D-Master System nomenclature and in the CIELCh system. Principal component analysis and cluster analysis were applied.

RESULTS

75 colors of the 3D-Master System were found. The statistical analysis revealed the existence of 5 cluster groups. The centroid, the average of the 75 samples, in relation to lightness (L*) was 74.64, 22.87 for chroma (C*), and 88.85 for hue (h*). All of the clusters, except cluster 3, showed significant statistical differences with the centroid for the three-color coordinates (p <0.001).

CONCLUSIONS

The results of this study indicated that 75 shades in the 3D-Master System were grouped into 5 clusters following coordinates L*, C*, and h* resulting from the dental spectrophotometer Vita Easyshade compact. The shades that composed each cluster did not belong to the same lightness color dimension groups. There was no special uniform chromatic distribution among the colors of the 3D-Master System.