Influencing Factors Over the Accuracy of Intraoral Scanners: Scanning Protocol and Operator Experience

Abstract

This paper is going over the different factors that could potentially affect the accuracy of intraoral scanners, either being induced by the materials we are using or by the operator. The aim is to be able to understand what could increase or reduce the performance of our scanners in order to improve the final results of our workflows. - Objectives: This study has been oriented toward the understanding of the general accuracy concept of intraoral scanners, their indications, the real purpose of the different scanning protocols over the accuracy of those machines as well as the operator’s experience effect over it. - Methodology: The material was searched through scientific databases like "Medline", "Cochrane" and "Mendeley" to ensure a bibliography with scientific and updated evidence. Clinical cases were not included because they were difficult to reproduce and lacked scientific evidence. A total of 29 studies were included in the final bibliography. Key words such as: “intraoral” “scanners”, “CAD/CAM”, “accuracy”, “operator”, “scanning” “protocol”, “digital”, “influence”, “user”, “experience”, “scan” bodies” were used. - Results: The results from this paper were taken in different articles being 5 years old or less. - Conclusion: Multiple factors can affect the overall really performant accuracy of the intraoral scanners, we have seen that a lot of the bad influencing factors can be removed or at least controlled to be able to maintain an acceptable accuracy. Some encouraging and unexpected conclusion have been drawn like the fact that the operator’s experience level doesn’t really affect the overall accuracy of the final scan and that the scanning protocol plays a key role in only a few models. We may recommend if anything, the scanning protocol given by the manufacturer as no particular discrepancies were encountered in between the different techniques. Computer aided design and computer aided manufacturing have made a huge evolution and still have a good progression margin that might correct the few flaws encounter.