Several options are available for dental implant treatment planning. These range from CBCT to implant planning software based on 3D images. The most relevant features of these approaches are summarised below:

	CBCT	3D printing of surgical guide, PR, FP core	Mock up and handmade surgical guide	Implant planning software
Definition	X-ray CT where rays are divergent	3D denture from a CAD model	Hand-modelling of a wax restoration and an acrylic surgical guide	Computational 3D tools for visual implant simulation
Equipment	Radiology scan, usually	Intra-oral 3D scanners, lab scanners, 3D printers	Dental office and dental laboratory standard equipment	Computer and software license
Strength	3D reconstruction of all soft and hard tissues	3D mesh of intra-oral visible soft-tissues	Aesthetic simulation. Patients’ agreement based on FP contour	3D visual simulation of the implant procedure
Limitations	No real-life colours Difficult to separate	No reliable integration with CBCT	Operator-dependent	Graphical info, no data about biomechanics

These tools are useful for implant treatment planning, but they lack key information about mechanical stress and deformations within oral cavity structures after implant placement. Biomechanical optimisation won’t be achieved by the use of the state of the art tools, hence, failure likelihood increases. There are also other approaches to obtain this mechanical information like photoelasticity or strain gauge measurements, but both require the set-up of a complex and time consuming experiment. Thus, they are not useful to be applied on a daily basis