Press release, for immediate release:
September 11, 2001
Materialise acquires CSI:
* Products Simplant and SurgiCase will merge.
* Materialise SurgiGuides will be available for all Simplant users.
On September 11th 2001, Materialise has acquired all stocks of
Columbia Scientific Inc. (CSI), the makers of Sim/Plant® and ImageMaster®.
CSI has become a fully owned subsidiary of Materialise, and will be
the USA head quarters for dental products for Materialise.
Today, Materialise and CSI have two competing products on the market
that perform dental implant planning: SurgiCase® and Sim/Plant®. “The
joining of our skills and forces will lead to a very advanced surgical
simulation platform that will create many new opportunities for dental
implantology,” says Wilfried Vancraen, Managing Director of Materialise.
The aim is to combine the strong market position of Sim/Plant® with
the growth and R&D power of Materialise. This will result in more software
releases and more products for dental implantology. A first result is
immediately visible:
As of today, all Sim/Plant® users can order SurgiGuides. These are
surgical drill guides that accurately transfer a Sim/Plant® or SurgiCase®
plan to surgery.
The long-term purpose is to merge the associated products and
activities, but there will be no immediate changes. The customers from both
product lines, SurgiCase® and Sim/Plant®, will be further supported and will
both have upgrade possibilities.
About surgical planning and surgical guides:
Prior to dental implant surgery, a pre-operative plan needs to be
created. High precision is obtained by using surgical implant planning
software such as SurgiCase® or Sim/Plant®.
This software converts the CT scan data of the jaw into a dental
reformatting and 3 dimensional images. For the surgeon, it is possible to
travel virtually through the bone in search of the ideal and most secure
location for the proposed implants.
This pre-operative plan serves as input for the manufacturing of
SurgiGuides by Materialise.
A SurgiGuide is a customized drill guide that is manufactured for a
specific patient. During the operation, the SurgiGuide will be placed on the
jawbone. It will guide the surgeon’s drill to the planned implant location
and angle. The implants will be placed into the drilled holes.
About Materialise:
Materialise started in 1990 in the sector of rapid prototyping.
Since that time, the company has experienced an exponential growth.
Materialise Medical can look back at 10 years of experience in medical
imaging software to interface to CAD or RP models. Materialise has offices
all over the world and the largest software development team in the RP
sector with locations in Belgium and Kiev (Ukraine)
About CSI:
Columbia Scientific, Inc. specializes in the design and development
of medical and dental applications software and workstations involving the
use of Computed Tomography (CT) data. Established in 1981, with an
experience of 20 year, CSI can be considered as the pioneer of its sector,
as well as the market leader. The company is located in Columbia, Maryland,
in the Baltimore, Maryland/Washington, DC corridor. CSI products are
distributed throughout the world.
www.surgicase.com
www.simplant.com
For more information about the rp-ml, see http://rapid.lpt.fi/rp-ml/
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