Application of a new scan body for face-driven fixed prosthetics

Area of Science:

• Dental Technology
• Biomedical Engineering
• Digital Dentistry

Background:

• Current digital dental prosthesis design primarily focuses on intra-oral tissues.
• Facial soft tissue harmony with prostheses is critical for esthetics.
• A gap exists in integrating facial features into prosthetic design.

Purpose of the Study:

• To introduce a novel digital method for designing dental prostheses that incorporates facial features.
• To develop and validate the use of extra-oral scan bodies for creating a virtual patient model.
• To enable face-driven dental prosthesis design for improved esthetics and function.

Main Methods:

• Developed and utilized new extra-oral scan bodies for facial scanning.
• Scanned a dental mannequin with and without extra-oral scan bodies.
• Superimposed intra-oral and extra-oral scan data to generate a virtual patient.
• Designed face-driven dental prostheses based on the virtual patient model.

Main Results:

• Extra-oral scan bodies demonstrated accuracy comparable to conventional scan bodies (within 0.1 mm deviation).
• Successful superimposition of facial and intra-oral scan data was achieved.
• A virtual patient model was generated, enabling accurate abutment spatial location determination.
• The feasibility of designing face-driven prostheses was confirmed.

Conclusions:

• The new method effectively generates virtual patients by integrating facial and oral scan data.
• This technique facilitates the design of high-quality, face-driven dental prostheses.
• The method is particularly beneficial for full-arch implant-fixed prostheses and complex esthetic cases.