CDA Recap

Well, another California Dental Association meeting has finished and it's time for my twice-yearly recap. There's also the Fall Session in San Francisco which this year is held in conjunction with the ADA Meeting, so that should be a great meeting as well. This was easily the best meeting that I've been to. First off, I lectured on Thursday on Digital Radiography. I was expecting 20-30 people at the most (who comes to a lecture on a Thursday morning?) but was thrilled to see over 225 people there! Lots of good questions, lots of nice people…definitely one of my favorite lectures. The meeting itself from Friday to Sunday was very well attended and I was able to meet many new potential clients for Dental Technology Consultants that we are looking forward to working with in the upcoming

Product of the Show

I was surprised that there were so many new and exciting products at this show, as most are normally released at Chicago MidWinter or ADA. The product that easily wowed me the most when I was there is the DentiMag3D. There were a number of companies showing magnified dental solutions (more on those in a bit) but this was the first time I've seen this in 3-D. You need to use special glasses that fit over your regular glasses and a 3-D monitor but the effect was simply amazing; I felt like I actually could crawl into the canals on the tooth that they were using for their demo. Pricing was in the $28,000 range and I'm not sure who the distributor will be, but this is a very slick system.

Other Products and Services

XDR was jamming in their booth. I was happy to see one of my favorite companies doing well. They were selling an insert on sensor placement that I think will be beneficial to many offices.

I've become a big fan of lasers ever since I started to lecture on them last year. Syneron has a very nice looking system, the LiteTouch, where most of the laser components are actually housed inside the handpiece, making it very easy to work with.

RF Systems was showing their Doctor's Station, which I had first seen at Chicago. It's an update to the Copernicus system with a much nicer glass monitor, intraoral camera receiver, memory card, TV tuner, and film digitizer. Very nice looking system, but I couldn't get the pricing from them.

I saw a really cool video camera called the SupaCam. It can take movies, digital photos, and was also an MP3 player and webcam. A very good image.

Speaking of magnified dentistry, there were two companies showing similar products. The first to market was the MagnaVu and they have updated their system with integration with the VELscope, used to detect oral cancer. Price was around $32,000. Camsight, which had a higher-end system, the Digital Surgical Scope, now has a product to compete with the MagnaVu called the Explorer. The DSS runs about $50,000 and the Explorer is around $32,000.
Speaking of Camsight, they had a number of other nice products, including the Opti Intraoral Camera and their new CDMx-h digital x-ray system, which looks similar to the Hamamatsu sensors.

TrollByte was showing their universal holder for sensors. It's a one-piece design and seemed easy to use and learn.

Progeny was showing their new imaging software called VisionDX. Progeny is using the e2v sensors which I love and have just developed this software. I didn't get a chance to play with it too much but the software looks good from what I could see.

One of the intraoral cameras I've always liked is the DocPortMacro. Lightweight, good image, decent price. They have both analog and digital models.

I know that many offices are looking at different in-office communication systems. While I still think BlueNote Communicator is the top of the heap, if you prefer earpieces, then the ones I saw being sold by the EarPhone Connection were very sharp: lightweight, comfortable, and priced well.

Planmeca was showing their Compacti dental chair and operatory and this was really, really nice. Very ergonomic, nice colors, very clean look.

I saw a nice scanner for scanning in insurance cards and ID cards, called the DocketPort by Ambir Technology. It has good resolution and is TWAIN compliant. Priced under $200.
Panoramic Corporation, maker of one of the most popular film pans, the PC-1000, now has their own conversion system, the 1000-DR. It looks like they are using the Ajay sensor, a very high end digital sensor. Pricing was in the $20,000 range if I recall.

I was also really impressed with the many Cone Beam systems that are coming out. One of the newest to the dental field is TeraRecon and their Prexion 3D. The unit can only evaluate from nasal tip to chin so it's really designed more for implant placement. At around $160,000, it's one of the least expensive Cone Beam systems on the market.

Hoya Conbio was showing a very lightweight and portable soft tissue laser, the Micro 980. This system was really tiny and easy to move from room to room, and the 980nm wavelength makes it very powerful as well.

I got to see the Owandy sensors and i-Max Easy Digital Pan and both are priced really well with very good image quality. Both are also TWAIN compliant which means they can work with most image software programs.

Finally, I saw the new Schick USBCam2 in action. Image quality is a step above the old system, as is the price: $3995 for the camera. It's much more ergonomically friendly than the old system as well.

Well, that's it for this issue. If you were at CDA and I missed something, please let me know and I'll include it in the next issue.