3D Archive in Dental Practice - A Technology of New Generation

Miroslava Dinkova DMD, Greta Yordanova DMD, Arch. Ivan Dzhonev

Abstract: Over the years, teeth impressions and casts became necessary in the dental practice for adequate diagnosis and treatment planning. Despite of all the advantages and wide application of casts, the clinicians are required to maintain an archive for plaster models, which is space and time-consuming. With the development of dental practices, the number of patients, the plaster models and the space for storage is growing, respectively. Since the innovative technologies, 3D-scanners and printers found a wide application in the medicine, the gypseous archive maintenance became unnecessary. Current paper presents a 3D-technology for cast scanning, which can be used in the dental practice for digital cast storage. The technology is called 3D-scanning. The cast is scanned, recorded in a suitable file format and archived on a server or a digital media. As casts are already digital, they do not take up physical space. These files are not aging and do not change with time. Scanned models could be manipulated and further used in special software to motivate patients.3D-technology successfully replace space-consuming archive, clinician can easily find a cast in a second, and if necessary, to reproduce it at any time with absolute precision via 3D printing.

Keywords: 3D-scaning, plaster models, archive