If you are considering dental implants in Granite Bay, one part of treatment you may not have thought about is the impression: the step where your dentist records the exact position of your implant so the lab can build a crown or bridge that fits. For decades that meant a tray full of putty-like material held in your mouth while it set. Today, many practices use a small handheld scanner instead. A 2025 systematic review looked closely at how accurate those digital implant impressions really are, and what makes them more or less accurate.
What Is a Digital Implant Impression?
A traditional impression uses a tray of soft material pressed over your teeth and implants; once it hardens, the lab pours a stone model from it. A digital impression skips the tray: the dentist moves a wand-like intraoral scanner around your mouth, capturing thousands of images that software stitches into a precise three-dimensional model, which goes straight to the lab.
For implant cases there is an extra piece: the scan body, a small, specially shaped post temporarily screwed onto the implant during scanning. The scanner reads its shape and position, and the software uses that to work out exactly where the implant sits and which way it is angled. If the scan body is not captured accurately, the crown or bridge built from that scan may not fit well.
Why Impression Accuracy Matters So Much for Implants
A natural tooth has a tiny ligament that lets it flex slightly under pressure. An implant does not: fused directly to bone, it cannot shift to forgive a small misfit. If an implant crown or bridge is even slightly off, the result can be a bite that feels high, food trapping around the restoration, or stress on the implant and its screws. That is why the impression step is one of the most exacting parts of implant treatment.
Accuracy here has two parts: trueness, how closely the scan matches the real shape of your mouth, and precision, whether repeated scans give the same result. The 2025 review focused mainly on trueness.
What the 2025 Review Did
The review, by Mohajerani, Djalalinia, Alikhasi and colleagues in the Dentistry Journal in 2025, gathered studies on digital implant impressions using splinted and non-splinted intraoral scan bodies. “Splinted” means the scan bodies are joined with a rigid bar or material before scanning to keep their relative positions stable; “non-splinted” means each is scanned on its own. The reviewers searched the literature up to 25 February 2025 and included 28 studies from 2020 to 2025. Notably, 26 of the 28 were laboratory, or in vitro, studies rather than studies in real patients.
What the Review Found About Scan-Body Shape
The clearest finding was that scan-body shape affected trueness: cylindrical designs with good dimensions generally outperformed cuboidal or spherical forms. In plain language, a well-proportioned round post gave the scanner a shape it could read more reliably than a boxy or ball-shaped one.
The review also found that rigid bar extensions and surface facets often improved scan accuracy. A bar extension gives the scanner a longer, more distinctive feature to track, while facets, flat surfaces cut into the scan body, give the software clear reference points, especially when several implants are scanned at once.
What This Means for Patients
The most obvious benefit is comfort. If you have ever gagged on a tray of impression material, a scanner is a welcome change: the wand is small, the process is usually quicker, and there is no putty setting in your mouth. Scans can also be reviewed on screen right away, so an unclear area can be rescanned on its own.
But the findings carry a caution: most of the evidence comes from laboratory studies, while real mouths add saliva, limited scanner space, moving soft tissue, and patients who cannot hold perfectly still. That is why the authors noted that standardized clinical studies are still needed, and why a good practice still verifies the fit of the framework or restoration before finalizing it, rather than trusting the scan blindly.
Splinted or Non-Splinted: Does It Matter to You?
For a single implant, this question barely arises. For several implants, especially a full arch, whether the scan bodies are joined can affect accuracy. The practical takeaway is not to pick a technique yourself, but to understand that your dentist is making a technical choice that affects fit, and to ask how impressions will be taken and fit checked before the final restoration is delivered.
What to Ask at Your Consultation
Ask whether digital impressions are used in your case, how the fit of your crown or bridge will be verified before it is finished, and what happens if a restoration does not fit perfectly on the first try. A beautiful implant result depends on invisible precision, not just on the visible crown.
Dr. Leila Nikpour, a prosthodontist with more than 15 years of dentistry experience and 2,500+ dental implants placed, leads implant care at Expert Dental Group, 5070 Foothills Blvd, Suite 2, Roseville, CA 95747. We are open Mon–Fri 9–6 and Sat 9–1. Call (916) 888-1646 to book a consultation. To learn more about the implant option, visit our dental implants page, or speak with a prosthodontist in Roseville about your smile.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is a scan body?
A scan body is a small, specially shaped post temporarily attached to a dental implant during a digital impression. The intraoral scanner reads its shape and position so the software can work out exactly where the implant sits and how it is angled.
Are digital impressions better than traditional putty impressions?
Digital impressions are usually more comfortable, avoid trays of setting material, and let the dentist rescan just one area if needed. For implants, accuracy depends on scan-body design and technique, and the fit of the final restoration should still be verified.
What did the 2025 review find?
Across 28 studies, scan-body shape affected trueness: cylindrical designs with good dimensions generally outperformed cuboidal or spherical forms, and rigid bar extensions and surface facets often improved accuracy. The authors noted that standardized clinical studies are still needed.
Why were most of the studies done in a laboratory?
Laboratory studies let researchers measure accuracy precisely against a known reference model, which is hard to do inside a real mouth. The trade-off is that lab conditions do not include saliva, moving soft tissue, or limited scanner access, so clinical studies are still needed to confirm the findings.
Does a digital impression guarantee my crown will fit?
No scan guarantees a perfect fit on its own. A careful practice checks the fit of the framework or restoration before it is finalized, so any small discrepancy is caught and corrected rather than delivered.
References
Mohajerani, Djalalinia, Alikhasi, et al. Dentistry Journal. 2025. Systematic review of digital implant impressions with splinted and non-splinted intraoral scan bodies.