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June 2009 | Dental Lab Products
Forward Trends: Digital Impressions

3Shape goes deep

3Shape’s Rune Fisker, VP of Product Management & Strategy, and Simon Mak Jensen, Global Product Manager, Dental Restorations, talk about changes digital technologies are bringing to the dental industry.

Simon Mak Jensen and Rune Fisker with 3Shape’s new D700 impression scanner.

DLP: Has 3Shape scanning technology been developed specifically for dentistry or has it been used in other industries?

Fisker: 3Shape scanning technology was instrumental in the complete digitization of hearing aid shell production. We are approaching dentistry in the exact same way we did the hearing aid industry. So, we’ve taken the technology platform we developed for hearing aid industrial applications and brought it into dental. We are the only major company in the dental industry that goes by a non-exclusive basis, so we sell to a range of partners. Since the launch in 2005, we have several thousand dental scanners across 55 countries.

DLP: You are marketing the D700 scanner strictly as a combined impression and model scanner. What technological challenges did you have to overcome to accurately scan an impression?

Fisker: We reduced the angle between the camera and the laser in the D700 so we now can look deeper into impressions. We apply two cameras in the D700 and one laser. In deep, narrow impressions, this dual-camera system allows the reflected laser light to be recorded by one camera where it can not be seen with the other camera. We also have three axes of movement inside the scanner to tilt and rotate the object for viewing from any angle.

The scan speed also has been improved by up to 40% with an improved camera throttle as well as the added ability to scan in two directions.

Traditionally, you would scan in one direction and then move back and scan in the same direction, left to right. Now, we scan in both directions, left-right-left-right. The D700 can scan a posterior preparation and adjacent teeth in 100 seconds. In all, you can scan and complete a single coping design, ready for manufacturing, in less than two minutes because of a number of advanced automated positioning and modeling features in the software.

Jensen: Using most impression scanning technology, if you have a difficult impression, the resulting scan will have gaps in the virtual model data. With our patented feature, called adaptive scanning, we can intelligently combine the movement of the laser and cameras and the movement of the object to automatically go back and rescan missing areas. We are capturing all the areas that are identified as incomplete from the first scan sequence. It’s not just a matter of scanning the object over and over again, hoping that you will eventually get the nice coverage you were aiming for.

DLP: Once the impression has been scanned and a virtual model created on-screen, how do technicians receive a physical model?

Fisker: The physical model is one of the big challenges of impression scanning. It wasn’t until recently that 3D stereolithographic (SLA) model printing achieved the proper accuracy needed by dental technologists. We have partnered with all the different 3D model printing manufacturers as well as companies offering model milling solutions. There has to be a cost savings to make this advance, and model making is what’s going to make digital impression scanning take off. In the future, labs will have in-house 3D model-making machines.

Jensen: The exciting thing about the ability to automate model making is that whether the scan is coming from an impression scan or intraoral scan, it is actually the same device you can use for outputting the model. Looking further into the future, dentists won’t be taking traditional impressions, and laboratories will not be making conventional models. Currently, you need models for the veneering process, but the changeover to 3D milling, pressing, or even printing full-contour crowns from digital data will eliminate the need for a model.

DLP: How does your software integrate impression scan data with files from outside technologies such as cone beam radiographs and intraoral capture devices?

Fisker: Cone beam scans today are interesting mainly for implant placement and drill guides. Our technology is open to intraoral scanners such as Cadent’s iTero, and you will see more of those systems come to the market soon. Two factors are limiting the penetration of the technology: The cost is too high and the digital capture is not user-friendly enough and far too slow. If you look to the future, the intraoral scanner and impression scanner will be the gatekeeper for all digital work.

Another technology we will incorporate into our digital workflow is full face scans. We scan the patient’s face and then combine that with a virtual diagnostic waxup for increased patient treatment acceptance and approval or combine the face scan with an anterior bridge design. That’s going to create a lot of value to the dentist with better information for the patient.
DLP: In many other industries, there is more of a seamless mix-and-match among digital components. You can already see in dentistry the partnering that is opening closed systems and allowing open systems to maintain their openness.

Fisker: The coming year will be very interesting in terms of change in this industry. We strongly believe everything will eventually become digital. How fast this will happen is still the question, but we believe traditional gypsum models will disappear. There will only be intraoral scanners, impression scanners, and CT scanners, most likely. Not tomorrow, not the day after tomorrow, but surely it is coming.

RELATED PRODUCT

• D700 Impression Scanner

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