Intraoral and extraoral digital imaging to control teeth treatment has already become everyday practice in dentist office. Patients associate a modern dental clinic with high technology, cutting edge medical equipment, high level of comfort. And a photo archive of images taken during the treatment would be an attractive and useful addition to the dentist's equipment. Intraoral imaging not only aids in controlling the clinical situation and makes the analysis easier, but also improves the patient's motivation and trust to his dentist.

It is not a big secret that visual representation of any information is the most effective one. This is why people use visualization as the most convincing way to create an image of desired reality. If you want your idea to be perceived easily and completely, visualize it! Dentists meet this challenge in their everyday practice. If the teeth treatment is caused by pain, or serious objective reasons, there is no additional motivation required, but any procedure which is made for cosmetic reasons require extra motivation of your patient which e.g. is often the case in orthodontics. And digital photographs are the most impressive way to decision making.

With some minor exceptions, a stomatologist is not a professional in digital photography and image processing, therefore such issues as selecting the right digital camera, acquiring images and subsequent image processing, archiving and retrieving are quite actual. The solution of the problems which begin after the picture has been taken is not as easy to find as it looks. While image processing issues can be solved by means of such popular software packages as Adobe Photoshop, Corel Draw, Photo Editor etc., image archiving for stomatological purposes is a special topic. An intraoral image is just a part of a collection of data which is required for patient treatment: results of radiodiagnosis, tomography, treatment plan etc. All of these files are usually stored separated from photo archive which makes the retrieval and analysis of all the required patient information complicated and time-consuming.

MMCSoft offers a solution to all of these systematization and interconnection problems MultiMedia Catalog Dent (MMC Dent).

• Store as many images, video files and files of any type and format as you need! Restricted only by your hard disk capacity. All the required files can be placed to one record with unlimited number of fields with text information about patient.
• You can import images from any digital devices which are equipped with TWAIN or DirectShow drivers directly to active database record. No intermediate saving to disc required.
• However if there is a collection of stomatological images and video files on your hard disc, smart import from disc allows automatic separation of files by time and place.
• Importing new files to record is as easy as drag-and-dropping to the thumbnail bar. Images and video clips will be shown as thumbnails while other files go to the document tab to be accessed anytime using the software associated with their file extensions in your operating system.
• Retrieve your patient data using all the text you have entered to record fields. Filtering by any number and combination of keywords will let you find required data sets fast. You can easy make complicated selections of records not only by patient name, but also by e.g. diagnosis, by certain periods of time (from... to...) etc. for statistical purposes.
• Make the most important image processing operations like cropping, image brightness, contrast and color adjustment, rotation and flip. Enhance images with filters.
• Perform manual measurements on images and save the results to record.
• Print out attractive reports for your patients.

If the included set of image processing tools like auto contrast, sharpening, smoothing etc. is not enough, for sophisticated processing the dentist can easily export image to favorite external software and then update changes in the database.