Choosing implant and orthodontic software
Why GuideMia
We put 8 implant planning systems against 64 criteria and cited every value to its source. This page is what we concluded from it, and every claim below links to the criterion it rests on — so you can check each one against the same evidence we used.
Start with the comparison
Built to be checked rather than believed. It states what each source says, never claims an absence nobody tested for, and names the systems a criterion could not be established for instead of leaving a blank that looks like a no.
- 8
- criteria where three or more rival systems are documented well enough to compare
- 7
- criteria where only one or two rivals are documented — a difference worth knowing, not yet a comparison
- 24
- capabilities documented for GuideMia and for no other system in the table
- 25
- criteria every system meets, which belong in a specification and not an argument
That is all 64 of them. The table also holds 307 blanks, where no public source could be found for a system. A blank is a question to put to that vendor, never a finding against them — and every one of them is a question you are entitled to ask before you buy anything.
- Implant planning systems compared:
- GuideMia Implant Master · DentiqGuide · BlueSkyPlan · coDiagnostiX · Implant Studio · R2Gate · ExoPlan · RealGuide
- Orthodontic design systems compared:
- GuideMia OrthoPlus · BlueSkyPlan · Clear Aligner Studio · Maestro 3D Ortho Studio · Nemocast · OnyxCeph³ · Vision (SoftSmile) · ArchForm
What it settles, and what it does not
Two findings in the comparison come from somebody testing every system against one fixed list, which is the only method that can show an absence rather than a silence. Everything else is a vendor describing its own product, including us.
The first is that only two of seven systems complete a plan without leaving the program. The other five need additional modules or external tools. R2GATE’s own documentation agrees independently — its plan exports as an RWS file into a separate program to make the guide.
The second is what the comparison deliberately leaves out. Placement accuracy is not a row anywhere in it. It has never been properly studied because no adequate method exists: the published work puts the leading systems inside 0.04 mm of each other at the platform with no statistical significance, using experimental software and tools, sleeves and printers unlike the ones in clinical use. Anyone selling you on an accuracy number is selling you something the literature cannot see. What actually governs guide accuracy is a longer answer and a more useful one.
Where we come out ahead, and why
Four clusters. Each names the criteria behind it so you can read our cell and everyone else’s in the same place.
The AI runs here, not somewhere else
Most systems send the CBCT away to be segmented — coDiagnostiX has it done by a third-party provider, and the published validation work on dental AI segmentation is written about cloud software because that is what there is to validate. GuideMia runs the segmentation on the workstation’s own GPU, which is why the requirement is an NVIDIA RTX card rather than an upload. One pass produces bone, separated teeth and nerve channels together.
It is reviewed, not trusted. Hide the bone and the roots come into view underneath, which is the check worth doing before you plan: clearance between a fixture and an adjacent root is judged against those models, so a root the AI merged with its neighbour is a safety check you will never be offered.
Open to the hardware and parts you own
Everyone writes open. The comparison records what it means in files you can look at. Add an implant system yourself with its dimensions alone or with real STL geometry and abutments, in a folder named by an environment variable so the catalogue survives a reinstall and can sit on a shared drive. Define a surgical kit that is not shipped as a .sgc file, once, for every case after it.
Scanners and printers the same way: STL, PLY and OBJ all import, scan bodies are recognised automatically, and the guide exports as STL including at its current orientation. Nothing in the chain obliges you to buy hardware from us.
One control is worth knowing because of what it prevents. When a case falls back to the universal kit the guide is built pilot-only unless Force fully guided design is set. exocad offers the same choice through its manufacturer workflows; the difference here is that the fallback is visible rather than a surprise at the bench.
The plan is checked before it is hardware
This is the cluster where the comparison finds least to put against us, and the one worth reading our cells on. Plan validation lists eleven criteria before the guide is built and marks the ones that failed: a fixture in the canal, implants too close named by tooth number, a drilling sleeve interfering with anatomy as a separate check from the fixture, an inter-implant angle over 20°, slice thickness above 1 mm. coDiagnostiX and Implant Studio document validation too; the eleven named criteria are ours.
Fit analysis measures the gap between the guide and the intra-oral scan it was designed from, in millimetres — fitting areas, gaps, collisions, undercuts — and the visualisation is patented. Read what it measures carefully: it proves the geometry against the scan, not the scan against the patient, so a clean map over a poor registration still yields a guide that will not seat.
Then the two nobody else documents. Plan error simulation asks whether, at the edge of what your printer and your hands deliver, the fixture is still in sound bone and clear of the canal — a plan that fails that is not wrong so much as intolerant. And plan against result on the same anatomy is the only way to learn what your error actually was rather than what a study says it might be.
Full arch, where planning software is tested
A single unit works in everything. Split guides divide a full-arch guide into sections that print and place when the span defeats the printer or the undercut defeats the seating — and the anchor pins matter more once it is in pieces, not less. coDiagnostiX and Blue Sky Plan document stackable guides too. What the comparison finds only here is bone reduction and splitting on one workflow page and a prosthesis guide as a component of a combined guide.
Zygomatic planning and bone reduction guides come in from the Studio tier. The cases optical scanning cannot serve — an edentulous ridge with no tooth surfaces, a long bridge scattering the CT — take the dual-scan protocol, and both are routine.
And one tick box that costs a remake when missed. Extraction is not a note to yourself. It tells the software the tooth surface will be gone and cannot support the guide, so material is added on that side. Forget it on an immediate-placement case and the guide is built to seat on a tooth that will not be there.
The case does not have to stay on one workstation
A plan is made by one person and judged by several. The Project menu packages a case as all files for web review, and Cympha Studio opens it in a browser with nothing installed — the referring dentist, the lab, a second opinion. The production workstation stays where the production is.
The orthodontic side runs on the same engine, and the join between them is real work rather than a brochure line: in OrthoPlus an anchorage implant is planned inside the orthodontic case, on the surgical-guide engine, with the implant-centric cross-section to read it on. When the implant position depends on where the teeth are going, that is one problem and not two.
You can read how it works before buying it
Most of our cells in the comparison cite one source: the documentation, published in full. Thirty-five chapters across Implant Master and OrthoPlus, step by step, with the screens, the exact wording of the dialogs, and the places the software will mislead you if you are not watching.
That is a deliberate position and it is also why the table could be built at all. Software you can only evaluate after signing something is software whose limits you find out late.
What this is worth
Most of a planner is table stakes. Of 64 criteria, 25 are met right across the field, and a page arguing from those would be arguing from nothing. The value is in what the rest of the table implies about how the work runs.
The patient’s data stays yours
Segmentation runs on your own GPU, the case lives in files where you put them, and planning keeps working when our service does not. Nothing has to leave the building for a routine case, which turns a data-protection question into a configuration fact.
Your catalogue is not our roadmap
Add the implant, define the kit, keep the libraries outside the install, export to the printer you own. A lab serving several manufacturers stops waiting on a vendor to add a system before it can accept the case.
Mistakes get caught while they are still cheap
Validation before the guide is built, fit measured against the scan, the plan tested against the error you expect to make, and the result compared afterwards. A remake costs a seat and a visit; the checks cost a minute.
The hard cases stay in house
Full arch, bone reduction, split guides, zygomatic, dual-scan. The cases that would otherwise be sent out are the ones with the margin in them, and keeping them is what changes the economics of owning the software at all.
Underneath all four is one shift. Automation does not remove the operator; it moves them from producing the plan to judging it. That is only an improvement if the plan can actually be judged — if the segmentation can be inspected, the validation names what it checked, the guide can be measured against the scan, and the documentation says plainly where the software will mislead you. Those are the properties this table was built to show, and they are the reason to choose GuideMia.