Facilities and Equipment

Our laboratory includes a variety of instruments for measuring three dimensional objects at various scales.

 Our scanning instruments include:

  • A Picza (Roland DGA) touch-probe scanner.   This instrument can scan surfaces with a point spacing of 50 µm in x, y, and Ahas a 50 µm z-resolution.  It comes with Dr. Picza software for data visualization and point cloud output.
  • An AGI Anthrogrammetry photogrammetric system (Taraz Metrology Prototype).  This instrument is designed for portability, work envelope, and resolution required to scan objects ranging in size from the teeth of mouse to mammoth.  The system is paired with a Dell G5 laptop with 32 Gb RAM, 1.5 TB HD, and a 1060 graphics card.  Agisoft PhotoScan software is used for generating 3D models.
  • A Medit i500 interoral scanner.  This portable instrument is designed for scanning teeth.  It can generate PLY or STL models at high resolutions both rapidly and with natural light, even  given inherent translucency of dental enamel.  The laboratory has GeoMagic Wrap, Meshlab, and other software packages that can be used with this instrument.
  • An XSM multi-sensor scanner (Xystum Corp, Turino, Italy) with an integrated OTM3 Laser Head (Dr. Wolf & Beck GmbH, Wangen, Germany). This instrument generates point clouds with a vertical resolution of 10 µm and a minimum lateral sampling interval of 10 µm. The instrument is bundled with digilinePRO post processor software for rendering point clouds and surfaces.
  • A Sensofar plµ standard scanning confocal profiler with integrated white light vertical scanning interferometer (Solarius). This instrument also generates three dimensional point clouds representing surfaces with a minimum lateral sampling interval is 0.18 µm, and the vertical resolution is 0.005 µm. This microscope is bundled with SolarMap Universal software for rendering point clouds and surfaces and analyzing microtopography using conventional metrological protocols.  We also have ToothFrax and SFrax scale-sensitive fractal analysis software (Surfract).
  • A Sensofar Neox optical profiler with integrated white light confocal and interferometric scanning.  This instrument generates three dimensional point clouds representing surfaces with a minimum lateral sampling interval is 0.11 µm, and a sub-nanometer vertical resolution. This microscope is bundled with Digitial Surf software for rendering point clouds and surfaces and analyzing microtopography using conventional metrological protocols.  We also have ToothFrax and SFrax scale-sensitive fractal analysis software (Surfract).
  • We also have several computer workstations  configured for image analysis and data processing.  These computers are typically configured with Apple M1/Intel i9 type processors, 32 GB RAM,  up to 32-core GPU, TB SSD HD, etc.  Lab machines also  share a common network drive.