With all the hoopla and hyple about the Omnicam, there are two types of emotions that I see floating around from CEREC users.  The first is mass euphoria- A color scanner, powder free, streaming capture, color models, - the Omnicam is just awesome.  Not as vocal but still present are the emotions of "OMG- I just bought my Bluecam and now I need to upgrade- WTF??"

The first series of emotions we have already addressed.  The Omnicam from Sirona is a major step forward and there is no doubt that anyone using the Omnicam or considering getting into CAD CAM has partnered with the right company in Sirona because they have obviously shown that they are not afraid to innovate and more importantly, they dont follow the trends, they set the trends.  No one has been able to combine streaming capture, full color and powder free.  The combination gives you virtual models like what you see below.  The models from my good friend Dr. Tarun Agarwal shows the power of the Omnicam and how well it works.

Having praised the Omnicam to no end, lets get back to reality.  I know there are some nervous folks out there that have had the Bluecam for anywhere from 3 months to 3 years who are thinking- wow- I have to pay more to upgrade?  Let me be perfectly clear- just as I wish my new car, my new house, my new everything everything cost less, I wish the cost to upgrade to the Omnicam was less.  But here is the thing- with the demand and popularity and the hype of the Omnicam, Sirona and Patterson cant make enough units to satisfy the demand.  So they would be foolish businesses if they priced the Omincam any cheaper.  As a consumer, that means that I have some decisions to make.

I can either say - hey, the upgrade is worth it to me, The ROI, the bells and whistles, the sheer enjoyment is there and I dont mind paying the extra money.  Or as a consumer, I can say that I quite haven't gotten my moneys worth and instead of spending another 20-40 k on the Omnicam, I'm going to wait.  If you decide to wait and not upgrade, guess what- you will still have the second best imaging system in the Bluecam.  In fact, some would argue that the Bluecam still is the industry standard because the Omnicam hasn't been proven in clinical tests and the real world whereas the Bluecam has performed flawlessly for years.

Its not as if the Omnicam was released and Sirona released a virus to make your Bluecams incapable of functioning.  The Bluecam has been used for millions of restorations by tens of thousands of dentists and it will continue to serve the dental population well.  The difference is only in the imaging with the Bluecam- everything else is essentially the same.  Same software, same features, same capabilities.

While the Bluecam requires a bit of powder, the Omnicam does not.

While the Bluecam takes individual images to stitch a model, the Omnicam uses streaming capture to create models.

While the Bluecam models are  monochromatic, the Omnicam has full color models.

But that's it- those are the only differences.  We can create beautiful restorations with the Bluecam - both anterior and posterior.  We can use the Bluecam to work with CEREC Connect. We can use the Bluecam to create veneers, crowns, bridges, implant abutments.  We can use the Bluecam to fabricate guided stents and implant restorations.

The Bluecam is in a word- still awesome.  I wrote in an earlier blog- we have no intention of getting rid of the Bluecams at the Scottsdale Center for our CEREC Doctors hands on courses.  Simply because there will be a significant number of users who will still use the Bluecams in their offices and they will require support and training.  In our website- we will not stop making bluecam videos.  Anytime a software update is released, we will have both Bluecam and Omnicam videos.

Our desire as techie dentists is to always stay on the cutting edge.  This is why most of us invested in the CEREC technology in the first place.  We wanted the latest and greatest to treat our patients.  Atleast with Sirona however, I think we have reached a point where there is no urgency to upgrade.  When we went from CEREC 1 to 2 to 3 to 3D, from Redcam to Bluecam, one could argue that upgrading was almost mandatory.  The benefits of the new system were vastly superior and worth the extra money and investement.  Today with the Omnicam, while you have easier imaging- I don't know that I can recommend for every single user out there to upgrade, simply because the Bluecam is still quite an excellent piece of technology.

With the Bluecam, you can do exceptional dentistry.  And its better than any other system by any other company by a long shot.  Here are a few examples that I pulled from the discussion forum of cases that were posted by some of our Mentors and Members.  All of this work is done with the Bluecam and in my opinion its quite exceptional.

So the moral of the story is upgrade to the Omnicam - if and only if it makes sense financially to you.  If the math doesnt work- continue to use the Bluecam and consider an upgrade in the future. Once the hype and hoopla dies down, there will no doubt be future opportunities for trade in to the latest and greatest. As dentists, we need to keep one eye on our patients and one eye on the bottom line.  No matter how excited you get about the latest technology, the eye on the bottom line is the most critical.

Some thoughts how Bluecam users could get some Omnicam features via software upgrade.

Back to the Omnicam: Texture mapping holds an interesting potential, so I am interested to have this feature also with the Bluecam. You call this monochromatic and color models, but that is too simplistic.

You can make the simple experiment on your CEREC Bluecam, scanning a plaster cast. Take a pencil, or colored pencil, and leave a mark (contact point, or whatever would be of interest). Make a scan.

Proceed until you get to the MODEL tab. What you will see is a surface defect where you have left the mark, because the 3D reconstruction did not have a reflective surface. So far so good.

But now go back to the SCAN tab, go to the scanned image folder, and select INTENSITY in the camera view window. What you see now on the left are the marks, BUT ON AN IMAGE. On the right the same, 3D reconstructed with surface defect because of missing reflection. So what does that mean: there is not so much a difference between Bluecam and Omnicam as one might think in this regard. What is described as Omnicam color streaming allows for texture mapping, to see the teeth in natural color. The Bluecam seemingly does the same, only in greyscale.

What would be the benefit for Bluecam users: inLab 4.0 makes possible full arch reconstruction, at least in theory. One buccal bite for registration of 4 quadrants is a loosing proposition. So to see the contact points of the full arch on the image, and compare it with the computer generated contact points would greatly enhance the confidence in the accuracy of the system. It would be a software upgrade to the Bluecam. For the contact points powdering is no hindrance.

As nice as the Omnicam images might be, I do not sell the patient the current dentition. When I get it right the patient will now see nice color images of the old teeth, and comparatively dull monochromatic rendered teeth of his planned dentition. Does that really make sense?

Michael


Notes

Overview of enoral scanner technologies "A Comparative Analysis Of Intraoral 3d Digital Scanners For Restorative Dentistry" (http://www.ispub.com/journal/the-internet-journal-of-medical-technology/volume-5-number-1/a-comparative-analysis-of-intraoral-3d-digital-scanners-for-restorative-dentistry.html).

Registering a complete arch with one buccal bite is a loosing proposition, I would like see to the proof of it. You might start at basics with http://archiv.ub.uni-marburg.de/diss/z2011/0566/pdf/dkg.pdf, then proceed to TMJ problems.

Im not quite sure I understand the point of your post. My apologies.

Not sure I see either point. Awful lot of words to say (suck it up and buy it if you can afford it.....)

I am not sure what (suck it up and buy it if you can afford it.....) means as English is not my mother tongue.

As to my point, a full arch registration based on one buccal scan is not possible.

I proposed a softwarebased solution to visualize contact points that is evident for Omnicam users. The technical terminus is texture mapping (the color images you see with Omnicam) that could be enabled as greyscale instead of color images also for Bluecam users.

Although a certain medical and technical competence is probably needed to understand the point you are free to ask any question.

michael, I understood your post.
i'm agree wiith sameer blog and with your considerations.
however I solved model distortion with manual acquisition and a different settling on camera.
omnicam resolve one step only ,acquisition image.
is a great develop for sure.
for expert user is not so different but for sure a great step.