## 4 Discussion  
According to the results of the present study, a strong and statistically significant linear correlation was observed between the micromorphometric variables calculated from the three-dimensional histological reconstruction and microCT datasets. The Bland-Altman and mountain plots show sufficient agreement between BV/TV calculated from the microCT and three-dimensional histological reconstruction datasets. BV/TV is considered the most important outcome measure among the micromorphometric parameters as it corresponds with the percent bone area calculated in the histomorphometric analysis [10]. However, the results of Bland-Altman and mountain plots are less ideal when evaluating the agreement between the micromorphometric parameters related to surface measures (BS/BV, Tb.Pf, Tb.Th, and Tb.Sp) between the two three-dimensional datasets. In this  
Figure 5: Bland-Altman (BA) plots on the left and mountain plots on the right comparing the microCT tiles and the 3D histological reconstruction tiles for the measured micromorphometrical parameters percent bone volume, bone surface/bone volume ratio, trabecular pattern factor, trabecular thickness, and trabecular separation. On the BA plots, the mean difference is indicated by a solid line, the 95% limits of agreements are indicated by dashed lines, and the fitted linear regression is indicated by a dotted line along with its 95% confidence band. Each parameter has close to zero bias (the slope of the mean–difference curve), but further statistical tests showed that this hypothesis cannot be rejected only for the percent bone volume; for the other parameters, the difference from zero bias is significant. On the mountain plots, the median difference is marked with a solid line and the 95% confidence interval is marked with dashed lines. The median difference indicates the bias between the two imaging methods; the closer it is to zero, the smaller the bias. Only the trabecular thickness measurements show a larger bias; however, all distributions show fairly long tails. study, the microCT reconstructions consisted of isotropic voxels, whereas the voxels of the three-dimensional histological reconstruction were anisotropic. The thickness of the slides was set at 5 \(\upmu\)m, while the resolution of the mask following the classification of different tissues was higher. This may have led to disagreement in the surface-related micromorphometric parameters between the microCT and three-dimensional histological reconstruction datasets. In clinical practice, it is essential to predict bone quality before implant placement to assess the risk of implant failure and to determine the time of prosthetic loading [7; 8; 9]. CBCT has become a standard for three-dimensional imaging modalities in the dento-maxillofacial region prior to implant placement and bone augmentation because of its low radiation dose compared to CT and its high spatial resolution [20; 53; 54]. However, unlike Hounsfield units (HUs) measured on CT reconstructions, gray-level measurements on CBCT are unreliable and should be avoided [20; 21]. Micromorphometric parameters calculated from CBCT reconstructions may be reliable indicators of bone quality, as the literature suggests that these measurements correlate well with those, calculated from microCT reconstructions of bone core biopsy samples harvested from the ROI [11; 55; 56; 57; 58; 59; 60; 61]. However, a correlation between the two variables does not infer a valid method for measurement. Because of these difficulties in predicting bone quality, it is increasingly important to research recipient bone microarchitecture following bone augmentation procedures to determine whether factors such as healing time, bone graft materials used, defect volume, the characteristics of the local anatomy, and systemic diseases or medication influence the quality of augmented bone. Assessment of trabecular bone microarchitecture is pivotal in bone augmentation and dental implant-related research.