Do you know what technical challenges Intraoral Scanners are facing?
Intraoral scanners have been available for more than 30 years, and have gone through several generations of technology evolution, with gradual improvement in performance and market affordablity, but the technical performance is still far from perfect, as the oral scanning research and development faces many technical challenges.
1. Complex system integration
The oral scanner is small but comprehensive. It is precision machinery, with projection and imaging optics, high-speed digital circuits, embedded software, front-end image processing, computer software and image processing algorithms, and other cutting-edge technology system integration. Because of the small size, strict power requirements, real-time requirements, and other factors, it is difficult to use the hardware of standard modules, and it is impossible to use the open source code for algorithms. All the technology needs to be developed by a company independently, and each step should be perfectly managed to ensure a great performance.
2. Complicated intraoral optical environment
Current oral scans are based on optical imaging technology, and the 2D image quality directly constrains the accuracy of the oral scan. However, the intraoral optical environment is very complex, especially the semi-transparent nature of tooth enamel, which makes the 2D image have serious scattering and the contrast is substantially lower than that of a plaster tooth mold. It results in a sharp decrease in scanning accuracy. Earlier years, powder coating was requied to overcome this challenge. Although the current mainstream technology no longer requires powder coating, the degradation of image quality due to enamel scattering is still the biggest challenge in intraoral scanning. In addition, there are other interfering factors such as tartar and saliva in the mouth, leading to a further increase in scanning difficulty.
3. Harsh constraints of size and power consumption
As a handheld device, the oral scanner has stringent requirements for its internal functional modules, hoping that the small size and low power consumption. It brings extremely high requirements to the design of the optical system and electronic system. To meet these requirements, we must work on the system design to ensure the ultimate optical efficiency, perfect power management, excellent heat dissipation design, etc., which are cutting-edge technologies in segmented fields and require profound technical precipitation
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4. Stringent electromagnetic compatibility and safety requirements
As an active medical device, the oral scanner needs to pass stringent electromagnetic compatibility and safety certification. The internal high-speed digital circuits potentially have strong electromagnetic radiation, but the compact space makes it difficult to implement conventional electromagnetic shielding measures, so it is a great challenge to ensure that the device meets EMC standards from the perspectives of circuit design and circuit wiring. At the same time, the compact space also limits parameters such as creepage distance and air gap and faces great challenges in voltage withstand as well as ESD testing.
5. High real-time 3D reconstruction algorithms
Intraoral 3D scanners need to process huge amounts of 3D point cloud data, stitch them together, and display them on the screen. These computational processes on the computer's arithmetic power need strong, algorithm design. And it is even more difficult to process 10 to 20 groups of data per second to complete these calculations in real-time. Each line of code needs to be carefully refined to make above happen.
The intraoral scanner is a very complex high-tech product. At present, the companies with Independent intraoral scanning research and development capabilities worldwide are Sirona, iTero, Planmeca, Carestream Dental, Medit, and Alliedstar etc. However, even for the originator of mouthwipe technology such as Sirona, the research and development process is not always smooth. When dentists choose an Intraoral scanner product, the technical strength of scanner company should be the primary consideration because only a company with strong technical strength can develop a great product and continue to optimize the algorithms to help doctors improve their work efficiency.