How to Choose a Dental Facial Scanner

Facial scanning is one of the newer additions to the digital dentistry workflow, but it’s quickly becoming a standard tool for practices focused on esthetic and restorative treatment planning. A 3D facial scanner captures a patient’s facial structure and expressions, then aligns that data with intraoral scans to give clinicians a complete picture of the patient’s smile. If you’re considering adding a dental facial scanner to your practice, here’s what to look for.

What a Facial Scanner Actually Does

Unlike a 2D photograph, a facial scanner captures a three-dimensional model of a patient’s face, including contours, symmetry, and, with the right system, realistic surface texture and color. When paired with data from intraoral scanners for dentists, this creates a combined model that shows exactly how teeth relate to lips, facial proportions, and overall smile esthetics. This is especially valuable for Digital Smile Design cases, full-arch restorations, orthodontic planning, and any treatment where facial harmony matters as much as dental function.

Speed and Patient Comfort

Facial scanning should add minimal time to an appointment. Look for a dental facial system that captures a full scan in a matter of seconds using multiple simultaneous camera angles, rather than requiring the patient to hold still through a slow, single-pass scan. Faster capture also reduces the chance of motion blur or incomplete data, which can happen if a patient shifts position mid-scan.

Accuracy and Texture Quality

A great dental facial scanner will have finely honed geometric accuracy and texture fidelity. Geometric accuracy determines how precisely the scanner captures facial shape and proportions, an important factor for functional planning like orthodontics or implant cases. Texture quality, captured through dedicated high-resolution texture cameras, determines how realistic the resulting 3D model looks. High-fidelity texture matters most for patient communication and case presentation, since a lifelike model helps patients understand proposed treatment outcomes far better than a flat photo or a low-detail mesh.

Integration With Your Existing Workflow

A facial scanner shouldn’t operate as a standalone device. Before choosing a system, confirm that it integrates smoothly with the intraoral scanner and CAD software you already use. Auto-alignment between facial and intraoral data is a key feature to look for. Systems that align this data automatically save significant time compared to manually merging two separate data sets. This integration is what turns a facial scan from a novelty into a genuinely useful part of your digital dentistry 3D workflow.

Portability and Ease of Use

Facial scanners are often used chairside during a consultation, so ease of setup and portability matter. A system that’s simple enough for staff to operate consistently, without extensive retraining, will get used more often and deliver more value than a complex system that sits unused after the first few weeks.

Facial Scanning Systems We Offer

Among the facial scanners we carry, each takes a slightly different approach, which makes fit-to-workflow an important part of the decision:

Shining 3D MetiSmile is purpose-built for dentistry rather than adapted from a general-purpose 3D scanner. It captures a full facial scan in about 10 seconds from multiple angles, includes a dedicated high-resolution texture camera for realistic color and detail, and automatically aligns with intraoral scan data, making it a strong fit for practices building out a complete digital dentistry workflow around Shining 3D’s scanning and design ecosystem.

Carestream’s CS Face Scan, available as an add-on to the CS 9600 imaging system, captures realistic 3D facial photos and automatically superimposes them with CBCT images and 3D models in Carestream’s imaging software. Because it’s built directly into the CS Imaging software suite, it’s a natural fit for practices already using Carestream’s CBCT and imaging platform, giving patients a combined facial and skeletal view for treatment planning.

Ray America’s RayFace is a standalone desktop 3D facial scanner known for exceptionally fast capture, as quick as 0.5 to 2 seconds, with AI-driven auto-alignment that superimposes a patient’s dentition data with their facial scan. RayFace integrates with Ray America’s broader imaging and CAD/CAM ecosystem, making it a strong option for practices already using Ray America’s CBCT systems.

Choosing the Right Fit for Your Practice

Which facial scanner is right for your practice depends on how you plan to use it, whether for esthetic case presentation, full digital smile design workflows, or functional treatment planning. Practices already invested in a particular scanner or software ecosystem should prioritize compatibility above all else, since a disconnected facial scanner adds extra steps rather than saving time.

At Esthetic Professionals, we use this equipment in our own laboratory and private practice, so our recommendations come from firsthand experience, not just spec sheets. Contact our Distribution Center to talk with Drs. Bruce and Kristi Crispin and our team about which facial scanner fits your practice’s workflow and treatment planning needs.