Dentist probe that takes tooth photos, is that, ultra sound, x-ray, What?

I broke a tooth on a hard pizza crust. Dentist did x-ray first then the assistant girl tried to take pictures with a probe. The girls was in such a hurry moving probes and pushing the button, click click click, the equipment kept rejecting the pictures. I told the girl, I think the probe is a camera you need to hold it steady or you get blurred pictures. Did you ever take blurred pics with your cell phone? The girl held the probe steady and the computer excepted it as a good picture.

Question, How does the probe take pics? Ultra sound? X-ray? Microwave? What?

It's likely using magic.

If the assistant is holding the probe then that rules out X-rays and microwaves. Aren't they ordinary optical images of the outsides of the teeth?

It is an optical camera. A computer stitches the photos together into a 3-D rendering of the tooth or the tooth area. My dentist uses a similar system to create a crown.

ak

alec_t said:

If the assistant is holding the probe then that rules out X-rays and microwaves. Aren't they ordinary optical images of the outsides of the teeth?

Click to expand...

Picture look like black & white photos of teeth for 20 different angles. It must be optical photos. There are 2 different technologies that I know about, computer uses the photos to cut a perfect copy of the original tooth, from ceramic material. There are 2 sets of photo. After bad tooth is cut away they take more pictures. A desk top milling machine cut a new ceramic took that is a perfect fit to that the place of the old tooth. Ceramic tooth is glued to the old tooth then 20 seconds of UV light makes the glue get hard. Dentist that have in house tooth cutting can replace your old tooth in 1 hr. The Dentist my insurance company sent me to this time has ceramic teeth made by another company it takes 3 weeks to get the replacement tooth. Insurance company paid $1750. I paid $200. $2000 per tooth is a ripe off glad we have good insurance. I am very surprised the dentist I went to this time can do 20 customers in 20 different rooms per hour. This is 1 of the Dental companies you see in all the shopping Malls. We have about 30 of those shopping mall dentist in our town.

Could be lidar and a 3D point cloud. The newer iPhone Pros can do LiDAR scans.

Looks like a camera, just uses a flash and ToF scanning or a scanning laser and ToF sensor.