What Are Digital Impressions?

Digital impression (3D intraoral scanning) is a modern technological innovation that enables the dentist to capture an image of your mouth digitally using lasers and other optical scanning devices. A digital impression generates a map of your teeth, allowing you and your dentist to have a digital view of your teeth on a computer screen. This creates a virtual model of the soft and hard tissue of your mouth. Digital impression data are sent to the laboratory to be used in molding dentures, aligners, crowns, bridges, and retainers.

Types of Digital Impressions

There are two types of digital impressions; the first type is image-based, capturing a series of digital photographs, while the other captures a digital video.

Why Digital Impressions Are Better Than Traditional Impression

Dental impressions are more comfortable for both you and your dental team. These advantages for the patient include:

Less chair time: Digital impression requires half the chair time taken for traditional impression. A 3D capturing of the mouth can be done within few minutes.
High Accuracy: Digital impressions allow easy capturing; they are highly accurate with minimal error. They give a more accurate replica of the mouth tissues than mold.
Convenience: They are safe, more comfortable, less messy, lesser inconvenience than traditional impressions.
Storage and Accessibility: Digital impressions can be stored electronically and indefinitely.

Digital impressions are also advantageous for the dentist because:

They save time and energy.
They eliminate labor and guesswork associated with traditional impressions.
They can magnify the images, making it easy to spot errors. These errors can be corrected before the file is submitted to the dental laboratory.
Digital impressions can be easily transferred to the laboratory via email instead of the traditional impression.

Overall, they are eco-friendly because they eliminate the use of plastic trays and impression materials.

How Are Digital Impressions Captured?

Digital impressions are captured using a pain-free and non-invasive process. At Absolute Smile Dental Clinics of Philadelphia, we utilize this innovative technology on the journey of creating your beautiful smile. Images are captured either using laser or digital scanners within just few minutes. Both scanning methods are safe and highly accurate.

Laser scanning: This involves the use of concentrated beams of light to capture the teeth and gums in precise detail.
Digital optical scanning: Firstly, areas to be treated are anesthetized and cleaned to get rid of saliva and blood. Some system allows the capturing of a powder-free 3D image of the teeth, however, others do not. Therefore, the teeth are powder-coated with a spray containing specially formulated titanium dioxide to ensure all parts of the impression are recorded accurately.

A small intraoral wand is inserted into the patient’s mouth, and moved around the surface of the teeth, to measure and capture small images. As the wand moves, it takes measurements and captures countless small images that are immediately merged by the digital impression machine’s software to give a precise map of your mouth.

Digital impression software pieces the images or videos together within seconds and displays the impression image on a chairside screen.