Length and Geometric Patterns of the Greater Palatine Canal Observed in Cone Beam Computed Tomography

Table 1

Incidence of pathways of greater palatine canal. The table below summarizes the frequency of canal pathways observed in both the medial-lateral and anterior-posterior planes, unilaterally (out of each 500 right and 500 left), bilateral symmetry (out of 500 pairs), and overall incidence (out of 1000 right and left canals).

Figure	Pathway	Right canal	Left canal	Bilaterally symmetrical	Overall incidence
Medial-Lateral (Coronal) Direction
Figure 2(a)	Canal travels directly inferior from fossa	45% (223)	34% (172)	22% (112)	39.5%
Figure 2(b)	Canal travels inferior-lateral for a distance then directly inferior for the remainder	39% (193)	48% (240)	23% (114)	43.3%
Figure 2(c)	Canal travels inferior-lateral for a distance then inferior-medial for the remainder	15% (77)	17% (83)	6% (31)	16%
	Other	1% (7)	1% (5)	0	1.2%
Anterior-Posterior (Sagittal) Direction
	Canal travels anterior-inferior	91% (456)	94.5% (473)	88% (441)	92.9%
Figure 3(a)	Canal travels directly inferior for a distance then anterior-inferior for the remainder	8% (40)	5% (25)	2% (10)	6.5%
Figure 3(b)	Other	1% (4)	0.5% (2)	0.02% (1)	.06%