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to their library to make it easy to pick
what you like to use in your practice.”
You've used the Planmeca
PlanScan® intraoral scanner quite
a bit and it was also featured in a
study you published with several
of your fellow academics. What do
you consider the scanner's main
strengths to be?
“Planmeca PlanScan has been
probably the best quadrant scanner
on the market. It excels at bread and
butter general dentistry. The scanner
is super accurate at smaller scan
ratios. Due to this accuracy, it can be
used for precision-fit restorations.
That’s where it excels best.
You know, they increased the
scan speeds dramatically with
just a software update. It’s pretty
remarkable. In my experience, it’s at
least double. That means the older
scanner is now pretty much in line
with newer scanners in the market
– so it’s very, very nice that that’s just allow you can re-scan and analyse
a software update. In addition to
that, they’re working on really nice
abutment and scan body platforms
that could be used for single-visit
implant restorations.”
In turn, the new Planmeca
Emerald™ scanner was released in
2017 and you’ve been using it right
from the start. What have your
impressions on the new scanner
been?
“Planmeca Emerald is your full
arch workhorse scanner. Whereas
Planmeca PlanScan I really like for
scanning quadrants and things like
that, I feel like Planmeca Emerald has
been designed from the ground up
for full-arch scanning – and it does it
remarkably well.
The scanner is very fast and
lightweight. You wouldn’t think
weight is a big thing, but it’s
something you have to touch and
feel to understand. When you pick
the scanner up, it’s as if you are
holding nothing. It flows and moves
in the mouth unlike any other
scanner I’ve had a privilege to use.”
Going forward, how do you
see intraoral scanning evolving
in general? For example, in
terms of the available range of
indications beyond crowns and
orthopaedics.
“There are no limitations to what
you can do with intraoral scanning.
I do full-mouth reconstructions
and large implant cases with it.
But diagnostically, it’s also good to
just take baseline scans of patients
coming in. It takes under two
minutes to scan a full arch, so why
not take digital records of where a
patient is at that point in time? It’ll
down the road. I really see physical
impressions going completely out
of the average dentist’s practice
within 10 years.” ▟
Dr. Walter Renne
Associate Professor
Medical University of South Carolina
Department of Oral Rehabilitation
Division of Restorative Dentistry
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