Carestream Dental used the recent California Dental Association spring meeting as a launching pad for its new CS Solutions CAD/CAM portfolio -- the company's first foray into the growing digital impressioning market.
Practitioners can use a Carestream Dental cone-beam CT system to scan conventional impressions and then create 3D models. All images courtesy of Carestream Dental.The system enables dental practitioners to scan, design, mill, and place restorations during a single patient visit, according to Carestream. It can help those practitioners new to digital impressioning get comfortable with the technology and the technique, noted Edward Shellard, DMD, chief marketing officer and director of business development for Carestream's global dental business.
"The system is designed to provide the doctor with the capability and ease of use to create a crown in a single visit," Dr. Shellard said. "One reason some doctors don't use some of these [digital impressioning] systems is the time it takes to train your staff. But CS Solutions is so intuitive it doesn't require training."
CS Solutions comprises an intraoral scanner, cone-beam CT impression scanning, restoration design software, a milling machine, and a Web-based platform for sharing and managing cases between dentists and laboratories. It is designed to function as an open system so that practices can opt to work with the entire product family or separate, standalone components.
The CS 3500 intraoral scanner.CS Solutions features five main components:
CS 3500 -- With the CS 3500 intraoral scanner, practitioners can scan patients' teeth directly to acquire color 3D images. The CS 3500 offers angulation scanning of up to 45° and a depth of 16 mm, and it features a light guidance system that navigates users through the image acquisition process. The CS 3500 requires no powder.
Cone-beam CT impression scanning -- Practitioners can use a Carestream Dental cone-beam CT system, such as the CS 9000 or the CS 9300, to scan conventional impressions and create 3D models. This approach enables practitioners to maintain a workflow they're familiar with since they continue to take conventional impressions, but it offers them the benefits of having a digital model.
CS Restore -- CS Restore is CAD software designed to enable practitioners to create natural and functional single tooth restorations in just a few steps. Once acquired with the CS 3500 or a Carestream dental cone-beam CT system, the 3D model is ready for design.
"CS Restore enables the user to design and mill a crown in just four clicks, if they choose to accept all of the defaults," Dr. Shellard said. "We tried to automate the process as much as we could."
CS Restore is a CAD software module designed to simplify and automate the restoration design process.CS 3000 -- The CS 3000 milling machine is a CAM tool featuring a four-axis brushless motor that produces restorations with ±25 µm accuracy. The single-bur system operates at 80,000 rpm, twice as fast as other on the market, according to Dr. Shellard; the average milling time for a crown is less than 15 minutes.
CS Connect -- CS Connect is a hosted, Web-based portal that enables practitioners to electronically transmit cases -- either the digital impression data or the restoration design -- to the laboratory of their choice.
While CS Solutions is designed initially for crowns, inlays, and onlays, it is "robust enough to do everything else," according to Dr. Shellard.
The CS Solutions product line made its European debut in March at the International Dental Show in Cologne, Germany. The system, which Dr. Shellard said will be "competitively priced," will not be commercially available until later this year. The company does not plan to include per-click pricing.
