Would you share with us your roles at Dentsply Sirona as well as your backgrounds? 

Björn Voss: I’m head of an R&D group that is focused on optical measurement techniques and we all have been working hard for the past few years on the Primescan project. Currently I’m supporting the last stages of the R&D process and testing. Through the years I’ve worked on other intraoral scanners. When I started with what was then Sirona in 2012, Konrad and I were involved with the inEos X5 project, which is our lab scanner. I have a PhD in Physics from the University in Heidelberg, Germany.

Konrad Klein: I’ve been with Dentsply Sirona since 2006 working on the CEREC BlueCam, inEos Blue, the inEos X5 that Björn mentioned, and in the past years as the project manager of Primescan. We have a multi-disciplinary team set up for Primescan consisting of people in electronics, optics, mechanical design, and software as the main areas. My background is in engineering and I have a PhD from Technische Universität Darmstadt in Germany.

Given the success of Omnicam, what were the driving forces behind developing this new intraoral scanner?

KK: The main goals of the project were to provide greater ease-of-use, to increase speed and to reach a new level of accuracy for the dentist.

BV: And given this, it was a hard task because we all love Omnicam and know about its qualities, therefore it was a tough challenge to develop something significantly better in all of the categories mentioned.

What are some of the challenges that needed to be overcome from a technological perspective? 

KK: There are two main approaches to measuring teeth intraorally: the triangulation approach where you project a pattern from one direction and observe the pattern from another direction.

The pattern often casts a shadow with the teeth and within the shadow no measurement can be done creating a challenge for the dentist. Omnicam uses this triangulation approach. The other approach is to use a dynamic lens that scans from the top to the bottom of the tooth and doesn’t need a second observation point so no shadow is cast overcoming that particular issue. Everything the scanner sees can be measured. Our research showed potential using the dynamic lens approach and therefore we came up with high frequency contrast analysis. This is the main enabler for measuring teeth at every angle. Primescan performs very well under all viewing angles and on all dental materials.

Could you give us some insight into the team, its people, as well as the innovation and testing process that they went through to develop the new technology? 

BV: In R&D we are organized into groups based on topics. We have teams focused on electronics, on optics, or on hardware-related software, etc. As the project developed, Konrad brought experts together from the various R&D groups.

KK: In the beginning the project started out with a small team and was one of many studies. As the study revealed that Primescan was likely to become a success, the study became a project and the team grew with it.

I’d like to add a related anecdote here. During the study phase it’s normal that it isn’t clear if what you’re working on will become a success. There was this wonderful moment early on when one of the team members sent an email and she wrote, “I took a picture of my teeth. Look how beautiful they are!” Of course, it wasn’t a photograph but a Primescan scan with all the details visible, and everyone in the team who saw the scan at that moment thought something like, “Wow. This is going to rock when it’s ready.”

What are you most proud of about your work on Primescan?

BV: I’m most proud of how smooth the process was. When you consider all the things that can go wrong, very few actually did. This comes down to everyone really doing their best. To illustrate that with an example, toward the end of the project, we were having a tough time verifying that the scanner had the accuracy that we had envisioned. I was feeling particularly under pressure but the whole team really came together and supported each other to come up with a solution.

KK: To add to Björn’s comment, think about everything that was going on in the background throughout the Primescan project. The Company went through a merger and changes in management with three different CEOs. Continually showing the progress and results necessary to maintain support in the belief that the project would lead to a successful product says something about the project team.

BV: The second thing we’re really proud of is that we are now able to compare ourselves to everyone else without fear that a competitor has a faster or more accurate scanner. The IDS was a proud moment for all of us as a team to be able to see the hype around Primescan.