Volume 6 • 2019 • Issue 8

17 Issue 8 | 2019 | CDA at W ork CDA/DENTSPLYSIRONA PRIZEWINNING CANADIAN STUDENT RESEARCH U ndergraduate student researchers, who were individually selected by their respective dental faculty Deans, presented and discussed their research with qualified judges and conference attendees at the CDA annual convention hosted at the 2019 Saskatchewan Oral Health Conference in Saskatoon. Da In Kim (DDS 2020) from the University of Alberta took first place honours for her research that compared three-dimensional digital imaging of hard tissue—using cone beam computed tomography (CBCT)—and three-dimensional imaging of soft tissue, which is captured with 3D facial scanners. “The overall objective of my project was to determine the generalized differences of corresponding landmarks on CBCT and 3D facial scanners,” said Kim. Both 3D soft- and hard-tissue analyses are necessary for obtaining precise measure­ ments for treatment planning. However, according to Kim’s research paper, precise facial measurements can only bemade when a clinician understands the relationship between CBCTs and 3D facial scanners, and thus can create truthful 3Dmodels of the soft tissues and underlying skeletal structures. Kim explains that “determining the percent ratio differences and finding the tendencies of how one imaging modality changes compared to the other will ultimately help clinicians to accurately predict different treatment outcomes for each specific patient. We can’t ignore the changes that hard tissue manipulation brings to the soft tissues.” Each year, the Canadian Dental Association and Dentsply Sirona organize a national student research competition where students from the 10 Canadian dental schools present research projects to a panel of judges.