Medical & Dental

Accurate, complex, unique and/or expensive: medical and dental components have to be controlled

Recent scientific progress and new medical techniques give birth to innovative parts almost every day. These elements can be manufactured for purely research and development purposes but also to save or extend human lives. In that case, they cannot fail and must work properly for a long time.

A life-critical device needs to be reliable and its longevity is a key parameter to know and understand. In order to obtain information, X-Ray Computed Tomography (X-Ray CT) is an advanced non-destructive technology able to provide internal and external measurements, material inspection and accurate comparison between a model and the final product.

Surgical needles, insulin pens, implantable medical assemblies, pacemakers, ophthalmic lenses, stents, pills, capsules, pharmaceutical tablets, they all can be scanned in a few minutes with an X-Ray CT system developed by RX Solutions. Thanks to its proprietary software X-Act, slices through the object, 3D volume visualisation and STL file can be generated directly from the data obtained without any additional program.

For dental applications, plaster casting is not anymore compulsory. Indeed, a three dimensional digital model can be generated from any dental impression within a few minutes and without any complex preparation.

X-Ray Computed Tomography (X-Ray CT) is well adapted to the various challenges link to medical and dental industries

Medical and dental components can be designed or adapted to one single person for anatomy reasons. In that case, X-Ray CT is perfectly suitable because full configuration of the measurement program is not needed every time the scanned component is changed. On the contrary, for metrology purpose and if a Coordinate Measuring Machine (CMM) is used, the probing path needs to be checked for every single part. With X-Ray CT it is not the case because this technology is not based on touching the sample.

Another reason that makes X-Ray CT convenient for medical applications lies on the capability to handle soft material with the same quality as hard ones. Indeed, it is because there is no contact with the part when using CT making possible to scan a membrane or a soft tissue.

When talking about material integrity analysis which is very important when an external component is introduced in a human body, X-Ray CT shows great capacities: it is easily possible to detect faults, cavities, areas of porosity or cracks. Of course it would be possible to detect them with another lengthy inspection method but CT is non-destructive and allows getting back the sample for normal use after internal material inspection.

Dental imprints and some medical devices present complex shapes both internal and external. X-Ray CT results are not affected by this complexity and accurate 3D digital model can be provided even for complicated 3D printed joint implants, personalized elbow prostheses or catheters. RX Solutions technologies can handle the most difficult materials used for medical and dental implants, including titanium and zirconia-based ceramics, and generate outstanding data with a nearly zero level of noise, beam hardening and scattering.

From porosity volume ratio computation in an implant to 3D mesh generation of a tooth, X-Ray CT can provide a wide range of results.

Each implant being different, its computer-aided design (CAD) model is every time a new one. With X-Ray CT, it is effortless to obtain a comparison between the actual and the CAD models. By looking in detail in the regions of interest of the part, a mechanical engineer can validate the device before giving it to the medical team.

Because failure is not an option, cracks, porosities and inclusions have to be detected before the implant is installed. Again X-Ray CT is able to produce clear reports with volume relative rates, biggest defaults detected with their positions and characteristics without even touching the sample.

Finally, when looking at new advanced medical devices such as drug delivery systems or implants made of titanium foam, RX Solutions X-Ray CT systems can provide the best both in terms of resolution and images quality. It then allows researchers to go deep into the ingenious new materials used for medicine applications.

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Providing robust and high quality X-Ray Computed Tomography systems, RX Solutions can help medical and dental professionals to enhance quality controls and create new advanced prototypes.