If you’ve ever had a traditional dental impression taken, you know the drill: a tray full of silicone putty held in your mouth for minutes while you try not to gag. That’s old news at Cville Dentist — for Invisalign, the iTero Element digital scanner took over years ago. It’s a small, pen-shaped wand that glides gently around your teeth, capturing thousands of images a second to build a precise 3D model of your smile on screen.
How Your Digital Scan Works
The iTero Element uses a tiny camera and structured light to capture the shape, size, and position of every tooth. As your hygienist or dental assistant moves the wand around your mouth, you get to watch the 3D model build in real time on the screen right in front of you. The whole scan takes three to five comfortable minutes — and because the data is digital, there’s nothing to spill, set, or retake. If a section needs a little more detail, just that area gets rescanned in seconds.
See Your Future Smile Before You Commit
One of the most exciting features of iTero is the Invisalign Outcome Simulator. Within minutes of your scan finishing, you’ll see a side-by-side comparison of your current smile and a simulation of what it could look like after Invisalign. For a lot of our Charlottesville neighbors, this moment is where things click — seeing a realistic preview of the result makes Invisalign feel real and achievable, not abstract.
Faster Turnaround, Better Fit
Your digital scan is sent electronically to Invisalign’s lab, which skips the shipping delays and possible distortions that come with physical impressions. That means your custom aligners are designed and made faster, and the precision of the digital file translates into aligners that fit better right from your first set. Patients tell us they notice fewer sore spots and smoother transitions between aligner stages.
What iTero Does Beyond Invisalign
Your iTero scanner also helps with other procedures at our Charlottesville practice — crown and bridge work, retainer fabrication, night guard design, and long-term monitoring of your oral health. The scanner’s NIRI (near-infrared imaging) can even help spot decay between your teeth without any X-ray exposure. When you come to Cville Dentist for Invisalign, all of this comes with the visit at no extra cost to you.