Keywords

1 Cloud Base Solution for Intelligent Dental Clinic and Manufacturing System

Industrial technologies are growing rapidly in recent years. Dental industry is toward a digital revolution as shown in Fig. 14.1 which causes traditional dental industry to face a serious impact and revolution [1, 2]. Dental clinics also transform gradually toward an intelligent environment illustrated in Fig. 14.2. In order to face this challenge, MDIC presents an innovative dental full-chain model focusing on digital design phase as a core concept plus the utilization of open-source technologies. This model based on an ecosystem platform provides a variety of services corresponding to the demand of dental clinics and dental labs. These needs may cover a variety of customizable dental products and services which are closely connected to dental design and manufacturing processes.

Fig. 14.1
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Dental digital workflow

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Fig. 14.2
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Intelligent dental clinic

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Integrating design and manufacturing for digital dentistry as a complete chain to provide custom service is the core in the model. In order to achieve high competence, MDIC established a mobile interface APP platform based on cloud computing and mobile ecommerce. Cloud computing provides a lot of advantages including high flexibility, low cost, mass storage, and parallel computing capacities to the proposed architecture [3, 4]. Further, mobile services provide customers with ubiquitous services and shorter response time to quickly respond to customers’ demand. Moreover, a lot of customer messages can be aware and collected by the sensors of mobile devices to continuously improve service quality [5].

The platform provides further features including flexible communications on geometry and color shading, the customizable dental order, and global data analysis. Moreover, the platform offers a variety of connecting services for various mobile devices such as smartphones and tablet PCs to connect to the system and communicate with global partners.

2 Integration of Digital Information

In the dental clinic, there are quite a lot of data produced on a regular base including information of extraoral impression, intraoral impression, CBCT dental medical image, occlusion and TMJ analysis, and tooth shade matching. The development of tooth shading device is discussed in the following.

3 A Shade Guide Development Based on Open-Source Technology

Dental color matching is a challenging aspect of prosthetic dentistry. A dental shade guide is an essential tool used in dental labs and dental clinics to determine the color of natural teeth [6–13]. Color measurement apparatus consisted of a spectrometer and fiber bundles fixed on an optical table as shown in Fig. 14.3 with probe bundles with round bundle light source and single-fiber spectrometer legs with SMA connector. The bifurcated fiber cables with a source leg to carry light from a light-emitting diode (LED) to a tooth surface and a spectrometer leg to carry light reflected by the tooth to a spectrometer. The probe tip is in contact with the tooth surface and the height of the tip raised from tooth surface to 0.5 mm and 1 mm, respectively.

Fig. 14.3
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Experiment setup using Y-shaped bifurcated fiber cables with a source leg to carry light from a light-emitting diode (LED) to a tooth surface and a spectrometer leg to carry light reflected by the tooth to a spectrometer

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4 3D Printing Applications in Digital Dentistry

3D printing, also referred to as “additive manufacturing,” has become one of the most well-known technologies since the twentieth century. Comparing to the conventional manufacturing, 3D printing has several remarkable advantages, such as overcoming the limitation of machining to make complex structures, high resolution, being simple for manipulation, and being easy for customization. Moreover, some 3D printers are small and economic enough for public to afford. Ideas and products can be made without sending into the workshop, which reduces the criteria of designing and fabrications at present; medical applications for 3D printings can be briefly catalogued into several uses, such as a means of manufacturing prototypes rapidly, or models for clinic, teaching, and surgical guides, or implants and prosthetics, or bioprinting [14, 15].

IMSC has established a 3D printing production line to assist industries and clinics in dental areas. Among different methods of 3D printing, “projection-based stereolithography apparatus” (PSLA) has additional advantages of economic and relatively smooth finished textures. In Fig. 14.4 which shows that two tooth models (colored in red) were manufactured for a dental technology company. In contrast to conventional manufacturing of making tooth models, the advantages of using PSLA manufacturing are higher resolution provided by digital files and less relaxation occurring in the PSLA material. The manufacturing procedure of PSLA requires .stl files to regenerate geometries, and these .stl files are often obtained by either intraoral or extraoral scanners [16]. Despite the improvement of resolution of scanners from macros to micros, one of the major reasons that this technique has not yet been largely used in practice is due to its loose accuracy and inconsistency, especially when it is applied to those assemblies requiring high precision. The accuracy of a finished component is influenced by many effects, from a preparation process [17], operating conditions [18, 19], a post-process [20], and other manufacturing processes with specific chemical reaction [21]. A standard operation procedure is defined to overcome these issues making loose accuracy and inconsistency to allow a printed model fitted with a manufactured zirconium denture, as shown in Fig. 14.5 below. It is believed that once accuracy and precision are repeatable, 3D printing cannot only be used in making models for teaching or guiding but also explores more applications, for instance, making orthodontic braces and quality control in the production line of tooth manufacturing.

Fig. 14.4
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RP model products from FDP and milling machine

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Fig. 14.5
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PMMA restoration on FDP model

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5 Conclusions

Change toward digital era is an irreversible global trend. Due to business competition, most medical facilities are designed as a close system. With the gradual opening up of the technology and broad network connection, medical processes will become simplified and efficient. Thus, both dental lab and dental clinics work increasingly in a smart way. Based on the development and validation of new technologies, MDIC continuously develops an international digital ecosystem platform that allows patients’ clinical satisfaction even higher than before.