Masking Power of Dental Opaque Porcelains

A technique was developed to qualify the masking power of undiluted opaque dental porcelain by dilution of opaque powder with a clear glaze powder and by extrapolation of quantitative data gathered by reflectance spectrophotometry. Quantification of reflectance data was made on dilute opaque porcelains using the scattering and absorption coefficients in the Kubelka-Munk equation. Qualitative comparisons of undiluted opaque porcelains were made from quantitative data gathered from diluted opaque porcelains.