ABSTRACT
262Dental implants used for dental restorations in patients may fail due to a number of factors like poor osseointegration, wrong implant design, faulty surgical technique or excessive loading. In order to ensure longevity of the dental implants, it is necessary to optimize the various features of the implant. Optimization is the technique of maximizing or minimizing particular parameters of implant on the basis of predefined rules. This chapter aims to explore the various optimization techniques and algorithms used in the field of dental implants. With the increase in computing power, optimization algorithms have played a key role to achieve the maximum performance from features like thread parameters, material properties, surface morphology and shape optimization. These features are explored in this chapter along with the various algorithms like genetic algorithm, topology optimization technique, particle swarm optimization, approximate optimization, multiobjective optimization algorithms, uncertainty optimization and a few more, which are commonly used in dental implants. Further, this chapter also reviews various complementary techniques that assist optimization like the surrogate models, which make use of artificial neural networks, Kriging interpolation and support vector regression.
