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Top1. Introduction
In recent years, advanced countries have actively developed automated dental equipment and have been applying it formally in dentistry. Various digital technology aids have been added to dental clinical diagnosis and treatment, including digital oral scanners, 3D printing, dental CAD/CAM, and the application technology integration of new materials such as zirconia are already in use in the dental industry.
In the traditional process of making dentures, the dentist must first help the patient take an impression. Traditionally, chemical materials must be used for a patient’s dental impression. The uncomfortable process takes more than 30 minutes as the chemical materials, with their peculiar smell and tightness, are molded around the gums. After the impression is completed, the dentist must pour plaster into it to obtain a reverse model, and then send the plaster model to a dental technician. It can take seven to ten days to transport the dental mold back and forth. The dental technician needs to turn the plaster model into a metal bracket and affix the teeth layer by layer onto the bracket to complete the orthodontic prosthesis. Due to the complicated steps and likely errors in the traditional impression method, the teeth produced often close incompletely, so even an experienced dentist may need to repeatedly modify, fit, or even return to the denture to the dental laboratory for remaking. The whole process takes at least two weeks.
In the production of digital dentures, digital intraoral scanners (IOSs) are used to directly scan the patient's oral cavity and tooth structure. Through a camera with more than five million pixels, more than 3,000 high-resolution photos per second are taken to construct 3D tooth model. It only requires a few minutes to make a full-angle, zero-error oral model. During the process, the instrument will not touch the patient's gums or teeth, which can eliminate the discomfort of traditional impression-taking, and the transmission of digital files can save the time of shipping parcels. After the data is transmitted to the dental technology laboratory, a denture is digitally produced with 3D printing. It is made of higher-priced zirconia material, has more beautiful color and better compatibility with the human body than traditional ones. A denture can be completed within two hours (figure 1). Digital IOSs are more and more popular in the United States’ market (Jacob et al., 2015). The application of digital IOSs in dental clinics supports various clinical treatments and is used by more than 40% of those surveyed (Keim et al., 2014; Park and Laslovich, 2016).
Figure 1.
Diagram Comparing Traditional and Digital Impression-taking Process