Ask any orthodontist what a clear aligner is really doing and the honest answer is biomechanics: a sequence of forces and moments applied to teeth that sit in living bone. The intra-oral scan (IOS) shows you the crowns beautifully. It tells you almost nothing about what happens below the gumline — where root position, cortical limits and bone quality decide whether a planned movement is actually achievable.
That gap is the reason Klaer plans every case on CBCT alongside the IOS. Not as an optional add-on, but by design.
Crown tilt is easy. Bodily movement takes a plan in bone.
Tipping a crown to close a gap looks like progress on a surface scan. But controlled bodily movement, torque and rotation depend on where the root is, how much cortical bone surrounds it, and how close it sits to anatomical boundaries. Plan those movements on crown geometry alone and you are projecting — estimating root behaviour from the part of the tooth you can see.
With the CBCT in the plan, the full root anatomy is in view. Staging happens inside the patient's actual bone envelope, so torque and translation are designed against the limits that exist, not assumed ones.
What the IOS alone can't tell you
- Root position and angulation — the geometry that bodily movement and torque actually act on.
- Cortical limits — where the bone envelope constrains safe movement.
- Bone quality and dehiscence risk — context that changes how a movement should be staged.
- Airway and anatomical context — the wider picture around the dentition.
The IOS gives the crowns; the CBCT gives the truth. Together they let the plan describe a real movement in a real patient.
How Klaer uses it
Every Klaer case is staged on the combined CBCT + IOS record. Root torque, bodily movement and rotations are planned on the full root anatomy — true 3D movement, not crown projection — and attachments and force systems follow that plan, case by case. AI stages the movement; an orthodontist verifies the biology; both sign off before anything is manufactured. You can see how that fits the wider case workflow and the planning logic on the main site.
The result is a plan you can defend clinically — because it was built inside the anatomy, where the movement has to happen.