CAT Scan use in a Shelby Township Dental Office

Hi. This is Dr. Antolak from thegentledentist.com in Shelby Township, Michigan. 586-247-3500 is our phone number. And what I have here is a skull.

And I actually have a computer program that can read a CT scan, or a cone beam CAT Scan. The benefit of a cone beam CAT Scan, unlike a regular x-ray you get at the office, the dental office, is, it gives us the ability to see things in 3 dimensions. And what I want to do is to demonstrate that, not on this person, but on an actual live patient that we took an x ray of before. I had a scan done of him. And we did some virtual placement of some implants and I just want to show you a comparison about what this can show versus what happens in within his skull, OK? So, as we see here in this picture here, we can see within his skull.

Okay. So, this shows, for example, a skull. Something like this, okay? But now, what’s really neat is, we take that skull and we can actually turn it, like this, okay? And we can make it look on the side like this.

So, then we can, here we’ll just twist around like that and manipulate it to make it look like I’m holding it’s skull except that it’s all done through the computer. Or we can make it tip up like that. We can look like underneath the chin area here. Right? And, what it also gives us the benefit, in this person, is we can actually determine and map out where the nerve of the jaw is in the bone. We can map out where that is and then in relationship to, let’s say for example, we wanted to put a virtual placement of an implant in, we can place it implanted here. And then we’ll know just exactly how far it is from the nerve itself. And then we know the length of an implant to place at that point.

Now, how this is generated is through 3 different axes. One axis actually is an axis that cuts off like this. The other axis gives us this section here. We can look at the cross section, for example, say of this jaw right here. We can take a cross section like this shows, and this shows right where this tooth is here. We see some of the cross hatches are here. And here.

That shows right where this implant is. Okay? And so what it does is by, we can actually go through and as we move this blue line here, if you can see the blue line, as that moves back we can see what that cross-section looks like, and then we can see any of the details that are showing us in the scan itself.

So, as we go through we can see how, for example, how this is changing. So, as we roll through it we can see for example that the red area there is where the nerve is. Now we’re back further and if we want to move forward we can put a virtual place for the implant which is the green right here and it will let us know how far we are to the nerve, where we are in relationship to the extent of the bone.

And so we know the angulations that we can use. We then know also, like I say, the lengths and exactly the positions to put them in.

So this just gives us the ability to be more precise. It gives us the ability to make sure that when we do something we hopefully just do it 1 time. And then that’s a favored result.

CAT Scan use in a Shelby Township Dental Office

This is called a cone beam cat scan, unfortunately in Michigan there are only a few areas where you can get this. The state of Michigan’s regulations are pretty strict on who they let open them up. These, to have these abilities for dentists who can have a cone beam cat scan, but we can definitely get you off to the right place to get that if it seems like it’s an appropriate thing for you and a way to help use our technology for a better improvement not only of your health but also for your entire smile, so thank you and if you have any questions please call us at 586 247 3500.