Omnicam Continues to Re-Define the Future Dental Office

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Dentalcompare
Clinical Director

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I’m just back from the introduction of the Omnicam at the CEREC 27 and a Half event in Las Vegas. I have honestly never been to a dental event of any kind that carried this much excitement.

What impressed me most was that I was among a collection of fellow doctors that were not in attendance simply because their CE credits were due, or because they were looking to stock up on the latest “trade show specials.” These were doctors who were there to watch the advancement of the modern dental practice and ensure they were a part of it. They were passionate about their patients, their practices and digital dentistry.

The Omnicam is the newest CEREC digital camera from Sirona that can capture three dimensional data for use in digital impressions and chairside CAD/CAM restorations. It captures full color data as well, showing every detail of enamel, gingival tissue, dentin or old restorations. And rather than requiring individual pictures, it captures the information in a streaming fashion.

Most dental CAD/CAM systems require individual photos and a very steady hand. Motion is the enemy, and a blurred picture means that the “impression” is inaccurate. With the Omnicam, the killer feature is its streaming capture. You just keep moving around the prep and the surrounding teeth, and the data fills in like the stroke of a paint brush. Considering it no longer needs powder, it completely revamps every frustrating feature of the original Red-Cam.

It was hard not to be impressed by the captured images, and my thought was that it would be good for treatment planning as well. What if your patient showed up to view a three dimensional model of their own mouth spinning on the screen? It blows away even the best intraoral camera. Spinning around a full color version of an old cracked tooth would be more than enough to educate a patient on their need for a crown.

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And ease of use? There is literally zero learning curve with this. Granted I have been using CEREC for more than 6 years, but I was able to sit down at a demo unit and capture a clean model with no help from anyone at the show. A friend of mine even had his 14-year-old son try a scan on him with no previous experience, and he had no trouble at all.

Check out the video below showing the speed and clarity of image capture with the Omnicam. Keep in mind this was just shot with my iPhone, but it gives you an idea of what we all got to see firsthand.

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