Additively Manufactured Scan Bodies for Virtual Patient Integration: Different Designs, Manufacturing Procedures, and Clinical Protocols

Abstract

Additively manufactured intraoral scan bodies can be used to guide the alignment of a patient's digital file information, including facial and intraoral digital scans both with and without a cone beam computed tomography scan, and to obtain a 3D virtual patient's representation. The present manuscript reviews the different intraoral scan body designs, procedures involved in additive manufacturing, clinical protocols for fabricating an additively manufactured scan body, performing a patient's digital data collection, and completing the alignment techniques.

Creating three-dimensional virtual patients by superimposing intraoral and facial digital scans guided with an aligner system: A dental technique

“…The buccal aligner is a further innovation of the aligner system. The regions involved in the superimpositions are notably more extensive than those of most previously developed aligners of this type, [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11] which favors the accuracy of the superimpositions, and therefore that of the resulting 3DVPs. Even so, there is no need for a laboratory scanner to obtain its digital scan after acquiring the reference facial digital scan because only the digital scan of its back is necessary (Fig.…”

“…They have been used for different clinical purposes, including obtaining virtual facebow records or performing facially driven digital diagnostic waxing procedures. [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11] Intraoral digital scans are acquired by using intraoral scanners (IOSs), whereas facial digital scans can be acquired by using various facial scanning methods (FSMs). Although most aligner systems can be used to superimpose intraoral digital scans with facial digital scans acquired with any FSM, the accuracy of a 3DVP is greatly influenced by which FSM is used, being more accurate when using more accurate FSMs.…”