Choosing implant and orthodontic software
Why GuideMia
We put 8 implant planning systems against 57 criteria and cited every value to its source. This page is what we concluded from it. Every claim below links to the criterion it rests on, so you can disagree with us from the same evidence.
Start with the comparison
It argues for nobody. 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
- 17
- 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
The table also holds 261 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 three criteria moved out of the middle column above once a rival’s manual was read.
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.
Where the comparison does not favour us
Three criteria sat in the GuideMia-only section until a rival’s manual was read and moved them out. Bone reduction guides are in coDiagnostiX and Blue Sky Plan. Nerve canal tracing is in six of eight, and RealGUIDE does it in one click. Pilot-versus-fully-guided turned out to be an exocad workflow option as well as ours. None of those is a differentiator and the comparison marks all three as baseline.
Others are still open against us. Hand-off to restoration design is two architectures rather than a winner — exocad is one suite where a Smile Creator design crosses straight into the implant plan, while ours is an open export of everything in one coordinate space to whatever CAD you already run. Which is better depends on whether you want to standardise on a suite or keep your CAD choice open, and the comparison declines to score it.
That is the point of publishing the table rather than a summary of it. A comparison you can only read in the vendor’s words is worth what you would expect.
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.