At the European Congress of DentoMaxilloFacial Radiology held in Freiburg, Germany in mid-June, Dentsply Sirona and Siemens Healthineers presented the world’s first dental-dedicated magnetic resonance imaging (ddMRI) system to a global audience of researchers and leading scientists.
The MAGNETOM Free.Max Dental Edition1 ddMRI system was developed as part of a joint research project between Siemens Healthineers and Dentsply Sirona. The two companies worked with dental universities2 worldwide to further advance oral diagnostics by establishing magnetic resonance imaging in dentistry.
According to Dentsply Sirona, working with ddMRI will add value to dentomaxillofacial diagnostics complementing previously established imaging modalities by now providing soft tissue contrast and thereby making the invisible visible.
The capability to deliver information on soft tissue, nerves, and inflammatory activities potentially enables the early detection of oral diseases and could help to prevent over- or undertreatment.
Together with a team of researchers and distinguished scientists from North America and Europe,2 Dentsply Sirona and Siemens Healthineers are demonstrating possible advantages of ddMRI in both preventive and corrective oral care. Initial clinical trials have shown its great potential for radiation-free imaging of indications such as 3rd molar extraction, endodontics, temporomandibular disorder (TMJ), periodontitis and orthodontics.3 The MAGNETOM Free.Max Dental Edition will come with a dental-dedicated receiver coil which has the potential to facilitate an easy patient setup and enable excellent image quality. Specific scan protocols tailored to dental indications are designed to simplify the MR image acquisition.
An automated focus view on the dental anatomy can provide important guidance to the operator. This enables an in-room set-up, scan time and clean-up time of 20 minutes or less.4 The workflow is said to be comparable to a dental CBCT scan. Moreover, with its significantly smaller footprint of 24sqm and an innovative, virtually helium-free5 cooling technology, the system can strongly reduce infrastructure requirements to allow for easy siting. MAGNETOM Free.Max Dental Edition1 will mainly be offered to dental schools and universities worldwide.
“I see great potential in this new imaging technique for dentomaxillofacial diagnostics,” said Prof Dr Rubens Spin-Neto, DDS, PhD, from the Section of Oral Radiology, Department of Dentistry and Oral Health at Aarhus University, Denmark. “Seeing more by obtaining additional information to a CBCT scan, for example the soft tissues, means being able to treat patients in a more targeted and maybe more successful way.”
Together with Prof Dr Donald Tyndall, Prof Dr Rubens Spin-Neto gave a lecture on ddMRI in dentomaxillofacial radiology at the ECDMFR 2024 in Freiburg.
In their presentation they provided a thorough explanation of the physics behind MR imaging, the concepts defining what dental-dedicated MRI is, and showed cases comparing 2D x-rays, and CBCT results to dental-dedicated MRI, elucidating the differences and the added value of ddMRI in the resulting images.
“We have reached a new milestone making a state-of-the-art diagnostic imaging technology accessible in the dental space for the benefit of patients,” said Max Milz, group vice-president Connected Technology Solutions at Dentsply Sirona at a press briefing in Freiburg. “We are very grateful for the excellent collaboration with Siemens Healthineers, which now allows us to make the diagnostic power of ddMRI available to dentists and their patients. Also, our cloud platform DS Core will support ddMRI, as clinicians can use the platform to share patient cases with referral dentists.”
“At Siemens Healthineers, we are committed to pioneering breakthroughs in healthcare. The development of a dental-dedicated MRI means entering a new clinical field, and we are excited to partner with Dentsply Sirona for this important step,” said Andreas Schneck, head of Magnetic Resonance at Siemens Healthineers. “As the market leader in magnetic resonance imaging, we are able to provide the leading MRI hardware in combination with digital technologies, such as artificial intelligence for high-quality image reconstruction and precise, faster diagnoses.”
1. The product is still under development and not commercially available. Its future availability cannot be ensured.
2. Prof Dr Spin-Neto, DEN; Prof Dr Tyndall, USA; Prof Nixdorf, USA; Prof Dr Dr Haßfeld, GER; Prof. Dr. Schulze, CH; PD Dr Probst, GER; Prof Dr Dr Probst, GER; Dr Scheifele, GER
3. Dental-dedicated MRI, a novel approach for dentomaxillofacial diagnostic imaging: technical specifications and feasibility | Dentomaxillofacial Radiology | Oxford Academic (oup.com)
4. M. van de Stadt-Lagemaat, M. Hellinger, C. Krellmann, M. Keil, J. Thöne, G. Krüger, K. Kettless, K. Burzan, R. Spin-Neto, A. Greiser; Siemens Healthineers AG, Erlangen, Germany, Siemens Healthcare A/S, Ballerup, Denmark, Sirona Dental Systems GmbH, Bensheim, Germany, Aarhus; University, Department of Dentistry and Oral Health, Aarhus, Denmark: Abstract on tailoring the examination workflow in dental-dedicated MRI.
5. MAGNETOM Free.Max is equipped with Dry Cool technology, which requires only 0.7 liters of liquid helium for magnet cooling over the lifetime of the device.
Related: Dentsply Sirona and Siemens Healthineers present joint research project in MRI for dentistry
