# Introduction
[0] Alright, guys. Today, I'm gonna talk about what's on everybody's mind, which is the new iPhone iOS app, Clone. Clone is an app that is designed for dentists if you get the dental pro version, which specifically is a face scanner that works on your phone. We're gonna compare this against some of the market leaders and some industrial-grade face scanners and see how it performs and stacks up against the competition.
## Using Face Scans
[30] How I like to use face scans and is there a benefit to using face scans. So let's just dive right into it and get started with what I think about this phenomenal little phone scanner. Alright. We're gonna jump into this software, Exocad and how I use the clone face scan. So first, I take a retracted face scan in the app as you can see here, and I like to align it to the intraoral scan using common markers.
[58] I find that the accuracy of the retracted face scan is pretty good. You could also do a best fit alignment like you see here where I'm inverting and making it only do a best fit to the teeth and try to get even more of an accurate alignment of those two separate distinct scans and you can see it is fairly close. I wouldn't say it's perfect alignment but it's decent.
## Aligning Face Scans
[80] Then we bring in the smile face scan and we align the file of the smile to the 3D face scan of the retracted using certain features that would not have changed between a retracted and a smile view. As you can see here, the alignment is pretty decent for that as well, although not perfect. However, for an inexpensive $200 a year, iPhone app, I think we're phenomenal here. I mean, this is groundbreaking to have such power in the palm of your hand.
[113] Now looking further at the details of the alignment of the intraoral scan to the retracted and the smile face scan, we could see we're fairly good here. We're actually usable, which means I feel like I could use this information to plan a case and have accurate results with things such as midline and size ledge, interpupillary line.
## Quality and Applications
[135] And more importantly, if we look at the quality of the non-textured file, we could see phenomenal results and clarity. I don't know how they did this with the phone app, but the mesh quality is better than some of my industrial scanners that I use. Now you might be asking, like, what do I do with face scans? Well, one of my favorite things to do with the face scan is to actually use it as a facebow transfer to the virtual articulator.
[165] I like to look at porion and we look at subnasally. We look at orbitally. We look at Frankfurt horizontal plane, and we look at the third point of reference on the articulator. We look at Bergstrom's point, which is 10 millimeters anterior to porion and seven millimeters inferior Frankfurt horizontal. And then we mount the patient using these landmarks.
## Digital Mounting
[191] This is the most accurate way to actually mount a case digitally and it actually negates the need for face bows and physical articulators altogether. And I've stopped using physical articulators. There's studies that show that this technique of mounting using face scans is just as accurate as a real face bow in a physical articulator.
[213] And so here we can see like looking at the scan here, look at how beautiful the colors are represented. I find like the quality is super good. Of the colors in particular, the mesh quality is decent as well. If we get into the stone view where we peel away the texture, we can see that you still have pretty decent clarity of the contours of the face.
## Comparing Scanners
[237] The tooth mesh is okay. I would say it's better than I expected. The triangle density is pretty profound. They've maximized triangle density even if not so artificially, but they've done so where you could using some AI algorithms, actually pick up embrasures of teeth which helps with the alignment.
[260] And so this is really cool. Compare this to the old school Bellis that we kind of all grew up with, that free app, the Bellis is almost completely worthless. I mean, the mesh quality is really bad. The teeth are completely distorted. Using it is basically non-functional.
## Shining Meta Smile
[277] So now how does this compare to the Shining Meta smile? The Meta smile is a phenomenal face scanner from shining. It actually does increase mesh density. The mesh density for the teeth is revamped to be even better and using it to align to the intraoral scan is accurate. I find that this technology and even doing a best fit alignment here like you see here where I'm just using the teeth to align is accurate enough to be diagnostic for treatment planning of things like all on x prosthetics, dentures, smiles, and things like that mounting in a virtual articulator.
[312] I do find that the color quality is okay. It's not quite as good as some of the other scanners on the market. It does struggle sometimes with black beards in particular but overall, I find that the Metasmile is an awesome face scanner. It is one that is easy to use and I think that the price is kinda mid-tiered.
## Vectra and Ray Face
[341] Jumping to the Vectra which has been my go-to face scanner for the past three years. I use the Vectra a lot because of the color clarity. It's just so beautiful to show patients. The retracted is necessary for the Vectra to pin to the intraoral scan, and you cannot do a best fit match because the mesh quality is too poor, so you have to go by dot only alignment.
[366] But thanks to the photorealistic view of the retracted, it's easy to do. Then we merge the smile face scan to the retracted, and we can use best fit alignment for that, which is a really good alignment. And then I like to go into exocad and actually delete the old teeth so I could peer through the mouth into my wax up and intraoral scan.
## Conclusion
[403] However, the stone quality and the mesh quality is very poor. I would say it's bottom tier these days for what I would expect for a face scanner. Alright. This is actually not that bad of a mesh quality. You know, even though the Vectra score is the lowest, it is very accurate I find as far as the shape and size of the head.
[427] The Ray Face. The Ray Face is another phenomenal, actually probably the easiest to use scanner out of all the scanners on the market. It's literally three seconds. Patient sits down. One thing I like about the Ray Face, it has a special camera just for the teeth. And so the teeth are captured at an ultra-high resolution.
[445] And both the Metasmile and Rayface can do auto alignment of your scans, your intraoral scans, before you even bring them into exocad which is nice. But like the Metasmile, the Rayface has really good best fit matching, to the intraoral scan better than the clone app. These are, you know, scanners that cost a hundred x times the clone app.
[470] So it it's not something that should be considered in the same category. However, if I look at the color quality from the Ray Face, I find it's pretty good. It's it's not top tier like the Vectra, but it's usable. Patients don't get too creeped out from the Halloween mask look like we used to get with face scanners.
[487] Looking at the mesh quality, I think the Ray Face has the best mesh quality for teeth, and this is even without any special opaquing medium being put on the teeth. And that, again, has to do with the dedicated special 3D camera just for the teeth. This helps with best fit alignment of your intraoral scans to your face scans which is the whole point.
[502] So in kinda summary, if I include price which is kinda like the big variable here, we can actually see that the clone app I ranked the same as the Metasmile and the Rayface which is phenomenal. It's not as good of a scanner as the Rayface and the Metasmile as it relates to accuracy, but when you consider that price point it's almost like a no-brainer. You gotta get it to try.
[535] The Vectra, even though it scored pretty low here, it's still one of my favorite face scanners. In fact, it's the one I use the most and that's just because of that color score five. I love the photorealistic look of the Vectra scan. When I'm showing patients their mock-up in three dimensions and I'm rotating around, they are just in awe of what we're able to achieve with the technology.
[561] Now this is just subjective. We didn't do any type of metrology analysis where we were looking at mesh accuracy compared to some gold standard metrology scanner. So these were all just kind of subjective values. Now if you take away cost, we have some clear winners here.
[582] Rayface being the best scanner I think when you take away cost and then Metasmile by Shining being like really close if not almost indistinguishable from the Rayface but it's a lot less money. And then we could see, you know, Vectra and clone kinda performing about the same in my mind when cost is removed.
[603] And so we are just practicing dentistry at an incredible time when we have a lot of options. There's a ton of scanners I didn't even include in here. One of my favorite kind of inexpensive scanners out there is the RevoPoint, Miraco. It's like a cheap handheld one that's super cool, and there just continues to be tons of scanners that come on the market. I hope this analysis kinda helps you guys before you take the plunge and buy an expensive scanner. Go ahead and play around with that clone app and see if you like it. See if it's useful to you.
