Dental Asia March/April 2019

Dental Profile
CEREC from Dentsply Sirona
has been very successful in
the market for more than
30 years. Through further
development of both the
hardware and the software, the company
made intraoral scanners popular in the
first place. About 35,000 CEREC units
worldwide and a digital impression
taken every four seconds with one of
Dentsply Sirona’s intraoral scanners, send
a clear message.
When introducing a new product to the
market, there are always considerations
behind the development. From their
customers, Dentsply Sirona knows that
flexibility and freedom of choice for every
treatment is very important. They also
know that digitalisation is an important
matter for all of their users. With this
in mind, Dentsply Sirona continues
optimising digital workflows available to
dentists, independent of CEREC, thereby
giving users many more options in terms
of intraoral scanners. In addition to
restorative treatment, Dentsply Sirona
also wants to improve implantology,
orthodontics and endodontics. The
company knows which features are
important to its customers: easier to
handle, considerably faster and, of
course, more accurate than ever before.
After speaking to Dr. Alexander Völcker,
Dentsply Sirona’s, Group Vice President
CAD/CAM and Orthodontics, at the
Dentsply Sirona World 2018, Dental Asia
also had a one-on-one interview with
Dr. Frank Thiel, Vice President R&D
CAD/CAM and Orthodontics, at
the product launch of its new
intraoral scanner - Primescan - at
Klassikstadt Frankfurt, Germany in
February 2019. Read on to know more
about Dr. Thiel’s role, consolidation
of Strategic Business Units (SBUs),
the new intraoral scanner, current trends
and Dentsply Sirona’s plans for continued
growth and expansion.
Optimising organisational structure
According to Dr. Thiel, after the merger
of Dentsply and Sirona three years ago,
Dentsply Sirona has constantly been
optimising their organisational structure
to fully utilise all their resources and
to continue to provide the optimum
solutions for users. Early this year, when
Dr. Alexander Völcker took over the
position as Group Vice President
CAD/CAM & Orthodontics, Dr. Thiel
became the Vice President R&D CAD/CAM
and Orthodontics. Dr. Thiel has been in the
CAD/CAM business for almost 15 years
and he looks forward to contributing to
many more future developments.
“I started with SBU CAD/CAM 15 years
ago and I am heavily focused on the
business. My role allows me to utilise my
expertise and my experince in developing
tools that empower dental professionals,”
Dr. Thiel explained.
Consolidation of CAD/CAM
and orthodontic SBUs
Early this year, Dentsply Sirona shifted
its focus from promoting mainly
full-chairside-systems consisting of an
intraoral scanner, the design software as
well as a milling unit to also focusing on
Digital impressions (DI) alone. Looking
at the orthodontic workflow, one of
the major key components is providing
clear aligner solutions. And at every
beginning of orthodontic treatment,
digital impressions are taken.
“Digital impressions are the starting point
for both CAD/CAM and orthodontics.
Therefore the recent combination of these
two particular SBUs is an advantage. It
drives a more unified product strategy
and more focused product development
by bringing together SBUs with similar
characteristics”
The development of intraoral
scanners
Dr. Thiel briefly discussed that the
development of intraoral scanners by
the company begun more than 30 years
ago with the introduction of CEREC.
The Bluecam was launched in 2009,
still with some technological limits but
definitely state-of-the-art at that time. In
particular, using the powder system inside
the mouth can be tedious as water and
saliva easily washes of the powder during
intraoral scanning. However, in 2012,
Dentsply Sirona introduced the Omnicam
– the smallest intraoral scanner at that
time. It was a great step forward, as it
was used powder-free and scanned in
colour. The Omnicam was designed to
work perfectly with the CEREC workflow.
“Back then, having a powder-free
scanning system as well as scanning in
full colour was a breakthrough. Before
Omnicam, we could not distinguish teeth
from gingiva. Omnicam is a very good
scanner and turned out to be a huge
success,” he shared.
Dr. Thiel revealed that as time went by,
the users and the market demands have
evolved. There was still a lot of potential
in scanner technology that the company
wanted to exploit. With these demands
in mind, Dentsply Sirona introduced
the CEREC Ortho software in 2015. The
company never rested on its laurels and
constantly researched and developed
based on the needs of dentists and
patients: speed, accuracy and ease of use.
The new intraoral scanner
Primescan
Based on all these aspects,
Dentsply Sirona developed the new
Primescan which was recently launched
in February 2019. Primescan is no doubt
a game changer in digital dentistry with
its significant features, taking digital
impression to a higher level.
With Primescan, it is possible to
capture an entire upper jaw in under
30 seconds, and a full arch scan in less
than a minute. During the scanning
process, the dynamic lens completes
more than 10 movements per second,
thereby enabling the “Dynamic Depth Scan”
– capturing more than 1 million 3D data points
per second. Thanks to its Intelligent Processing
which filters, processes and compresses the high
volume of data models can be calculated faster.
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DENTAL ASIA MARCH / APRIL 2019