Table 1.
Chemical Composition of the Organic and Inorganic Components in the Artificial Saliva used to simulate Oral Environment.
Fig 1.
Four Step Compressive Loading Cycle used to Simulate the Occlusal Contact Force during Swallowing.
Fig 2.
(a) Experimental setup of the upper and lower cast with the aligner and (b) the final test setup aligners in contact with the sponge soaked in artificial saliva and enveloped in cellulose hydrate filmimental setup of the upper and lower cast with the aligner and (b) the final test setup aligners in contact with the sponge soaked in artificial saliva and enveloped in cellulose hydrate film.
Fig 3.
(a) A Sample Microscopic Image of the Artificial Saliva on the Glass Substrate; (b) The representation of the same Microscopic Image as RGB components in Feature Space.
Table 2.
Selection of Optimum Clusters for the Sample Microscopic Image using Partition Entropy.
Fig 4.
(a) Histogram of the Gray level Distribution in the Unclassified Microscopic Image (presented inFig 3a); (b) Clustered Image with k = 2; (c) Histogram of the RGB Distribution in Cluster 1; (d) Histogram of the RGB Distribution in Cluster 2.
Fig 5.
(a) Microscopic Image of a sample MP in the glass slide; (b) Image Segmented into 3 Clusters and the general shape of MP is highlighted in Yellow (Please refer to the Online Version of the article for the coloured image).
Fig 6.
(a) Cluster of Interest Extracted from the Clustered Image; (b) Cluster of Interest converted into Grey Scale; (c) Grey Scale Image Converted into Black/White; (d) Object of Interest, which is the MPs separated using Edge Detection Operators.
Fig 7.
Energy Absorbed by the three different Clear Aligners under Cycle Compression Load up to 22,500 Cycles.
Fig 8.
Microscopic Images of the Microplastic Particles in the glass slides, released from Essix Ace and acquired from the Residual Saliva.
Table 3.
Dimensions of Microplastic Particles released from Essix Ace during the Cyclic Compression Test.
Fig 9.
Optical Microscopic Images of Essix Ace Aligner at different Tooth Positions: (a) First Premolar on the Upper Right showing Crack Formation; (b) Second Molar on the Upper Left showing Chip Removal.
Fig 10.
Microscopic Images of the Microplastic Particles in the glass slides, released from Ghost Aligner and acquired from the Residual Saliva.
Table 4.
Dimensions of Microplastic Particles released from Ghost Aligner during the Cyclic Compression Test.
Fig 11.
Optical Microscopic Images of Ghost Aligner at different Tooth Positions: (a) First Molar on the Upper Right showing Crack Formation; (b) Second Molar on the Upper Right showing Wider Cracks; (c) Second Premolar on the Upper Right Showing Strain Hardened Regions and Cracks; (d) Second Premolar on the Upper Left Showing Strain Hardened Regions.
Fig 12.
Microscopic Images of the Microplastic Particles in glass slides, released from Invisalign and acquired from the Residual Saliva.
Table 5.
Dimensions of Microplastic Particles released from Invisalign during the Cyclic Compression Test.
Fig 13.
Optical Microscopic Images of Invisalign at different Tooth Positions: (a) Canine on the Upper Left showing Chip Removal; (b) Second Molar on the Upper Left Showing Crack Formed.
Table 6.
One-way ANOVA Test Results to compare the Dimensions of the MPs.