In today’s digital age, clinical photography offers dental practices greater opportunity than ever before. Images taken with modern digital cameras can provide detailed case documentation and facilitate communication between clinicians, patients and laboratory technicians. Clinical photography has versatile applications across all fields of dentistry and can improve areas of practice including diagnosis, treatment planning, case acceptance, prosthetic design and more. Clinical photography even enables practices to showcase their dental artistry via social media, helping build brand recognition and attract new customers.
Despite these benefits, many dental care providers are still slow to adopt photography as a core part of their practice. Barriers to implementation include a lack of knowledge of photographic equipment and techniques, a perceived difficulty of integrating the camera into regular workflow and even intimidation due to technological complexity. Shofu Dental Corporation seeks to ameliorate these challenges with the EyeSpecial, a smart digital camera designed exclusively for dentistry and built with total ease-of-use in mind. From dental assistants to laboratory technicians, Shofu’s camera instantly allows every dental professional to take great photos. Among its numerous accolades, 2019 marks the EyeSpecial’s fifth year as winner of the Cellerant Best of Class Technology Award, a testament to its innovative design and ongoing role in shaping contemporary practice.
Featuring eight dental-specific, pre-programmed shooting modes, the EyeSpecial requires virtually no photographic knowledge or experience to operate. This lets the entire team effortlessly capture brilliant, high-quality images for any purpose with a simple point-and-shoot approach. Other user-friendly features include auto-crop, smart focus/zoom and anti-shake capabilities, along with a 3.5-inch panoramic, grid-lined LED/LCD touchscreen which can be navigated with gloved hands. The EyeSpecial also eliminates the need for inconvenient add-on filters and flashes as it automatically sets the appropriate f-stop, aperture and focal length with each photo for consistent, reliable results.
With its a sleek, ultralight (approximately 1lb) body, 12-megapixel sensor and intelligent FlashMatic system, the EyeSpecial delivers true-color reproduction and exceptional depth-of-field range. One of the EyeSpecial’s most remarkable and useful features is its isolate shade mode which grays out gingival tissue. This unique setting simplifies the often-complex process of shade-matching and paves the way for improved laboratory collaboration and prosthetic outcomes.
Clinical photos captured with the EyeSpecial can be uploaded to any OSHA- and HIPAA-compliant device via WiFi card. This makes it easy to share images with staff and patients and turns office computers and tablets into better tools for communication, education and case acceptance. The EyeSpecial is water-, scratch- and chemical-resistant and can be readily cleaned and disinfected with a sterilizing towel. These attributes mitigate the possibility of cross-contamination and make the EyeSpecial ideal for maintaining infection control in the office.
To learn more about the EyeSpecial camera and how it can change the way you practice, visit Shofu’s website.