This has been an exciting year for me.
I passed my board exams, graduated from the University of Maryland School of Dentistry, sold my house, and started working at a practice I love. What makes my story unique compared to the average dental student experience is that a month before graduating, I patented a new type of intraoral scanner.
My intraoral scanner design improves on current technologies' ability to scan prepared teeth for crowns and bridges and can obtain final denture impressions. It utilizes air jets embedded around the head of the scanner to blow air on the tissue at adjustable pressures. When scanning teeth, this air controls moisture, inflates the sulcus (possibly eliminating the need for packing cord), and differentiates soft tissue from hard tissue (soft tissue can be deformed by air pressure, but hard tissue cannot), allowing for detailed capturing of the margins in the 3-D rendering. For denture patients, the air will be used to load the soft tissue of the vestibule—similar to grey stick compound when border molding—allowing users to get final digital impressions quickly and without impression materials or trays.
That first impression
I have always been an out-of-the-box thinker with a passion for problem solving. When I was 15 years old, I was interested in scuba diving. But disliking the heavy tanks, I tinkered with designs of a tankless scuba system that would scrub CO2 from exhaled air, recycle exhaled O2, and obtain more O2 from the surrounding water via electrolysis.
After getting a motorcycle at 19, I designed a motorcycle jacket that would have built-in CO2 inflatable air bags that expanded when a rider was ejected from the bike. During college and after, my out-of-the-box thinking helped me publish multiple articles on metal-enhanced fluorescence, an applied-physics technology used for developing novel diagnostics.
In my second year of dental school, the former dean asked me to be a guest speaker at the 2013 faculty retreat to present my ideas on a variety of efficiency and education improvements I had developed for the school.
Dental school was a hard adjustment for me. Memorization was more important for most of the multiple-choice exams than was problem solving. During my first two years the vast amounts of information, endless hours of lecture, and grueling exam schedule left little time for discussing the information and conceptually wrestling with ideas.
I tried to imitate those who were successful, repeatedly going through countless PowerPoints, trying to memorize as much as I could. But despite my best efforts to stay focused, I kept finding myself challenging the information presented to us. Something in a lecture would catch my interest and I would start researching that specific topic, learning its complexities. This did not always lead to the best grades, but I appreciated the deep understanding I developed for these topics rather than having just memorized a set of facts for an exam.
Extracting implanted thinking
One topic that caught my interest early in dental school was CAD/CAM dentistry, and I was quickly convinced it was the future of the industry. I started researching the topic, spending time with the school's digital dentistry expert, Dr. Gary Hack, and getting trained through senior electives and CE courses.
As amazed as I was by digital dentistry's impact on fixed prosthodontics, I was equally astonished by the relative lack of technological advancement in removable prosthodontics in comparisons to other fields of dentistry. I remember, while making dentures in pre-clinic on a typodont, asking myself, "Why can we not use intraoral scanners for dentures, and what needs to happen to make that possible?"
Dental school is a great place to ask questions due to the ready access to knowledgeable experts. I discussed with numerous faculty and residents my questions about, and interest in, digitizing the denture-making process. Initially, most of the responses I got were, "That won't work because…" followed by an obstacle to making the technology a reality. These obstacles became little puzzles for me—challenges to be solved. I found solutions to most of these obstacles, and after a year of going over the matter in my head, a design started to take form. Eventually, faculty started responding, "That might work."
A prototype for life
I did not set out with the intention of designing a new intraoral scanner. It was the product of my attempts to figure out how to make denture fabrication more accurate and efficient. Moving forward with the design and patenting it, however, were intentional, and took work. I reached out to people I knew who had experience with patents and medical devices. They helped establish my partnership with the University of Maryland's Office of Technology Transfer (OTT), a branch of the university's Research and Development Department. I gave multiple presentations to non-dental people who had the needed expertise in business, engineering, computer programing, and law, to evaluate the design. Their questions and feedback helped me refine the design further. During my last year of dental school, between studying for board exams and seeing patients, I researched other patented digital denture technologies and wrote my provisional patent.
Currently, a prototype is being built by an engineering firm and I will be pursuing various grants to fund further development of the project. I have a variety of options, including developing the technology with the University of Maryland, licensing the technology myself and developing it privately, or licensing the technology to another party to develop. I am considering all my options, but will likely choose whichever will best utilize this technology to improve dentistry for both patients and providers.
And then I'll find another question to ask, and another puzzle to solve.
Dr. Micah Weisenberg grew up in the Bowie/Annapolis, Maryland area. In 2009 he graduated from Towson University's molecular biology, biochemistry, and bioinformatics program with minors in chemistry and business. He worked at the University of Maryland Biotechnology Institute before deciding to go into dentistry. Weisenberg graduated from the University of Maryland School of Dentistry in 2015 and is currently working at the Pediatric Dental Center of Frederick.
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