Page 14 - CEREC Q4 | 2014

12 | CERECDOCTORS.COM | QUARTER 4 | 2014
in the q2 2014 cerecdoctors.com
magazine, I wrote an article titled
“Choosing the Correct Block.” The piece
was not only about how to go about
choosing the correct block, but also how
to communicate with your patients more
effectively via photography. For a follow-
up to that article, I decided to tackle the
topic of smile design. Being a potentially
complex topic, this article will introduce
a simple and inexpensive protocol for
patient education and case execution.
When thinking about smile design,
one has to consider goals. Is your goal
to communicate the value of treatment
to the patient? Is your goal to create a
complex plan to communicate dimen-
sions to a laboratory technician for a
proper wax-up? Maybe you have both
in mind or other intentions. Once you
establish your purpose, how much are
you willing to invest in a smile design
protocol to accomplish these goals?
After considering all of this myself,
I set out on a journey to not only create
a simple protocol, but one with an
extremely minimal investment to the
dentist. Smile design is a rapidly evolving
field and investing a lot of money
into something before that progres-
sion matures is a potential risk. Being a
photography and Photoshop enthusiast,
I decided to utilize a simple, effective
method of both patient communication
and final treatment planning with Photo-
shop Elements (Adobe). The goal of this
article is to give an introduction to the
tools and methods I use on a daily basis.
Please note: A detailed
step-by-step process of
these methods will be avail-
able in a new smile design
Simplified Smile Design
Protocol for Patient Education
and Case Execution
C A S E S T U D Y | | | B Y M I K E S K R A M S TA D , D . D . S .
video catalog on www.cerecdoctors.com.
The only required software is Photoshop
Elements (Adobe).
CASE STUDY #1
As mentioned previously, smile design
can be a complex topic. It can often
include not only teeth, but the teeth in
relation to eyes, lips and overall facial
proportion. In these two case examples,
we are strictly going to concentrate on
tooth position, both proportionally and
in relation to the gingival architecture.
One of the first steps that must be
accomplishedwhen using Adobe Photo-
shop for smile design is relating the
dimensions of the teeth clinically to the
software itself. That is, we want to know
the exact dimensions (in millimeters)
of the teeth in Photoshop. To do this,
we will calibrate digital rulers based on
dimensions measured in the mouth.
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