A comprehensive digital approach to enhance smiles using an intraoral optical scanner and advanced 3-D sculpting software

3-D printingIntraoral optical scanners (IOS) eliminate the necessity for traditional impressions by enabling the acquisition of digital impressions.Recent studies have demonstrated that high trueness and precision can be attained by digital impressions.1,2 Until recently, the only output generated by IOS for digital impressions was the STL (Standard Tessellation Language) file format. 2 Now, some IOS provide alternative file formats such as OBJ (OBJect) and PLY (PoLYgon).OBJ and PLY file formats enable a more accurate model than the traditional STL file format.These newer formats encode 3-D (3-Dimensional) models via tessellation with polygonal facets, and additionally capture information about color and surface texture, allowing for extremely accurate, multicolor 3-D printing.Smile design can be performed digitally and allows a patient to have heightened awareness of the anticipated treatment outcomes, prior to initiation of a treatment plan.3,4 Some digital smile design software programs are timeconsuming and difficult to incorporate into a clinical workflow.However, the software program (Zbrush, Pixologic, Los Angeles, CA, USA) used in this report is one of the most advanced digital sculpting and painting programs, providing an intuitive workflow.4 This software allows several actions (i.e., pushing, pulling) by using millions of polygons simultaneously, and it is traditionally used by professional artists and computer graphics designers in the film and videogame industries.