Digital Cosmetic Smile Design For Smile Makeovers

Hey, everyone, this is Doctor Justin here. Welcome to the next episode of before and beyond. I'm really, really, really happy to be here. And, today I'll be talking more about, smile makeovers, in the process of smile makeovers. And, we're gonna talk smile makeovers and in whole or in part, would be to do with veneers and crowns. Okay. Because that is, those are the treatments that we usually do to improve someone's smile. In this episode, I'll be talking more about the process of how we actually design your smile. And what are the things that we actually look out for and getting all the data that we need to actually go and design a smile. And it's so important because a lot of our patients, come to us and they say, hey, can I, can I see you now and straight away, "Can I do veneers and crowns to make it look good?" But I always say, hey, gotta I gotta take one step back, and you need to really, we need to actually take all the data that we need from you to actually design a blueprint, a smile that you like before we actually execute the plan.
And if we don't do that and a lot of the dentists actually fall into the trap of just doing it without actually thinking about it. That really, really sets the whole flow in a bad way. And often what happens is that you have to compromise something in order for us to make up for that you know, that lack of thought. Okay. So I'm thinking this, this episode of using my old lectures slides that I made for dentists, because I teach as well. And so I thought, it'd be nice if I actually go through what the planning is all about, and it's so important. And dentists, some the reason why I'm teaching all this is because a lot of dentists don't really understand what are the data that we need to design a smile. So that's why we have to do it. All right. So, here we go.
So a little about me. This is my slides. So I'm going to just say it out loud. You know, I graduated from Melbourne. I’m the past president on the Aesthetic Dental Society in Singapore. I'm a general dentist. I'm a trainer and KOL for a number of different, companies and dental suppliers. So I actually give them my opinions on some products. I'm also a clinic and lab owner as well. Okay. So today's sort of presentation that I'm doing for you guys, is about how we actually perform a smile transformation. And the first thing all our and all modes of medical treatment would be to actually get data first. Right? And that's the biggest thing. We want to have data. Right. And if we don't have data, then, the all modes of data So if we have enough data, if we do have, the enough data, then we have enough options that we can think of.
Options not just one certain way to do it right, it's not a recipe book. Dentistry and medicine is not a recipe book. Everybody is different. Everybody has different concerns. Everybody in different situations. Everybody has different history. It's so important for us to get a data correct accurately so that we are able to make the correct diagnosis and treatment plan, right. So, like I said, data is to get an accurate and relevant information that will enable the dentist to make informed decisions regarding diagnosis and concerns of a patient resulting to a creation of a plan. Treatment plan. And first, it comes from history taking. So, that's when I see you in a chair. And we usually book in an hour or so. To really get to know you, know your about your concerns, know about your previous history with the dentist. You know your pain points that we actually need to address.
Right? And then we go into a new workflow where we actually take all these data that we need based on the history taking that we have done. And with all these data and all this history that we have taken we will then have a discussion with you with a formulated sort of treatment plan already. So the first thing that we do is we actually have an intra oral scanner. So once we have that history taking we want to take the shape of your teeth. And, and traditionally what a lot of dentists were doing last time was to take a mould So you might have gone to the dentist and to make a mouth guard or to take an impression of your teeth. You take a mould and they put in the mouth. When they do that, then they have a mould of your teeth and they pour in stone or plaster to have the teeth shape. All right. But now with digital technology, we are able to use a scanner to scan your teeth so you can see that this is a intraoral scanner.
This is called an intraoral scanner. And what an intraoral scanner can does is actually it's like a camera. It's like your iPhone. The iPhone knows, the position of where it's scanning or taking a photo of. All right. So when that happens and it creates a three dimensional coordinate of all these photos to create that image. So in the end you end up with a 3D model of someone's teeth. Just like this. All right. So you can see that over here we have the upper jaw over here. Over here we have the upper jaw. And over here we have the lower jaw. Okay. And you might be asking me what are all these red marks here and the blue marks here and, and all these yellow marks here and all that stuff, and these are telling me where the patient is biting. All right? The red means that it's stronger there compared to the blue compared to the, compared to the yellow compared to the green compared to the blue.
So you I have an indication where, the stress points of your teeth. So if I feel that, hey, if I take a scan and I take the bite and I see that there's a lot of areas that have a very high stress point compared to other areas, either the bite that I took was wrong, or maybe those teeth are under a lot more load. Okay. And because of that, we might want to put, like a crown over there in the future before things start to break to protect the tooth. That's a different topic for a different day. What I'm trying to say is that we can actually look at all these strengths and load of your teeth to perform what we need. Okay, so there's a lot of data that we create. Okay. And then from there we actually to another, data collection, we actually, have a photo studio in all of our clinics. We have three clinics with all of our photo, all of our clinics.
We have a photo studio, and it's a proper setup. With the lights and cameras and the cameras are there to make sure that, and the cameras are very high res, to really, really zoom in to make sure that we see all the details that we need. Okay. Sorry, I got a blank out this just patient of ours, but we take photos, and it is in a very, very high res. And what it does, it basically sets us up for checking where the midline is checking. And a horizontal plane is, checking where her eyes are, then also checking where her smile curve is. I think we discussed about a smile curve and whether one side of a jaw is longer than the other side, where her nose is shifted to the other side or not all that matter. Oh, really, really matters in designing a smile. Why? Because if you don't take into consideration the facial features, the facial reference points of your teeth, of your face, then you're going to design a smile that is not in harmony with the face. And that's so it looks really weird.
It looks very awkward. You might have seen some of the friends that they have done, braces or they have done veneers and they just look straight, but it doesn't look like those teeth belong to them. And often you ask yourself why? Because if you take a picture of the teeth alone, they look great, right? But if you take a picture with the face of the teeth they look weird. And this is because the teeth, are not in harmony with the face. And so we often need to take pictures of the face to decide correctly about it. Okay. All right. So let me just go back. We also sometimes take, x rays off of the face, right of the, of the mouth, of the jaw and the skull and, and this is needed in only in certain cases because we don't want obviously, to, create more radiation for the patient.
And so we take an x ray because we actually are able to see the bone structures, the teeth structures, just in case we need to plan, anything that involves the bone, for instance, implants, for instance, jaw surgery to move the jaw in a specific way to make it in a more aesthetic manner or more functional manner. Okay, so we might take an x ray. This is a 3D x ray that allows us to be able to understand the bony morphology of the jaw and of the teeth. So you can see that this is an example where, this is an example where we take photos, okay. As well as take a video. So, we will take a video as well in case to see how the lip moves. All right. So if you have a look over here we can then see how the lip moves right.
All right. You can see that when you're smiling. When this person is smiling, she's showing a lot more gums then when she is smiling statically. So you want to see the smile, the natural smile, both in a static and a dynamic way. Therefore, in smiling, it looks good. All right. Any time you don't want to have like a postured smile, mean to say that the smile only looks good when someone smiles in a certain way. That selfie stick way, right? You want that smile to be in beautiful in all different aspects of motion, right? So that's so important. Of note as well, we also have a face scanner as well. You can see that we also have a face scanner and a face scanner just sticks all that 2D images that be taken, the photos be taken and mash it onto 3D so they we can see contours of the face, and how protrusive something is, how intruded something is.
So what I mean by that is maybe the jaw is a lot more back set compared to the upper jaw. We can tell with a face scan. Okay. And so we have all this information. We have the jaw, which is the bony structure over here. And we have the 3D rendition of the teeth and the gums. Right. And so now. These the teeth are the same teeth over here. The teeth are in the same teeth over here. Right. And so what that means is that we can actually superimpose the data together. Okay. So you can see this is what we do. We can actually have a data set that is. The patient's face using the face scanner patient's jaw. So the patient's jaw over here jawbone. So the bony outline the bone, the bone itself and the bony anatomy.
And it also we have the intraoral scan. So we have the 3D model of the teeth with the jaw. With the jaw which is the bone okay. And the teeth as well. And then we have the face scan. So you have the face scan over here. So I literally have a 3D avatar of the face. All right. I can have all the data that I need to really design the smile. And from there I'll be able to then perform my treatment planning and design a smile based on all these features. Okay, if your dentist is looking at only the teeth to fix a smile, then you need to look more. He needs to look at the face. He needs to look at other things in order for us to design a nice smile, okay?
And it's so important. Keep on emphasizing that, because if you have a look over here, these are some of the reference points that a smile designer needs to use to be able to design a smile. So you can see that we are looking at the whether it's in line with the eyes, whether in line with the joint okay. And so the different planes that we use, you can see there's also a vertical plane as well that we use to design the smile. And so if we don't do that then we don't really have a nice set of teeth. And so this is a just one way of designing a smile, which is basically over here, just a very, very quick and easy way of designing a smile that, that we can actually, use reference points for. And you can see that from there. I can then look at different types of structures and shapes of teeth that I can put on. They will try to blend in with the smile.
And so I'll talk more about that in the future. Okay. You can see that I can rotate it in different dimensions to make sure that I get what I need. Okay. All right. And now once I have all the data that I have, I can then design a smile. And when I do design a smile. It takes time, okay? It takes time between me and my dental technician to sit down and look at features to make sure that it looks natural. Right. And so that's this is what we got to do and how we do it. And once we design the smile already. Once we design a smile, it's important for us to test run the whole entire system. What do you mean by test run is that we design that smile. We put it on top of a teeth. We let you have a look, then you try it out before we actually go and execute the whole entire thing.
Because once I start to execute the thing and that might involve shaping your teeth or, you know, changing the structure of the teeth, it could be irreversible. There's no going back. There's no going back. And so we want to try to do as much as many things beforehand that is reversible before we even step into the realm of being irreversible. All right. So that's very important for us. All right. So I think that's all for this episode of veneers, on Data Acquisition. I'm going to start you off in the next episode soon. When we talk about, how we actually design a smile at the same time, how are we going to do a test run of your smile? Okay. So I'll see you guys really, really soon in the next episode. Thank you.