Over the past 2 decades, tissue engineering has emerged as an alternative technique to repair and restore function of damaged or diseased tissue. Tissue engineering is a rapidly advancing discipline that combines the attributes of biochemical and biomaterial engineering to create bioartificial tissues and organs. For the oral and maxillofacial surgeon, the reconstruction of maxillofacial defects in hard and soft tissues is an ongoing challenge, and the new clinical applications of tissue engineering are important endeavors in oral surgery in general and in dental implantology in particular. These new techniques are often combined with new digital instruments (digital radiology and treatment planning, optical imprint, CAD-CAM design of materials, etc.) in order to plan complex rehabilitation, guide surgical steps, or design custom-made biomaterials for tissue engineering applications, for example.

Digital dentistry is a wide topic regrouping any dental technology or device that incorporates digital or computer-controlled components, in contrast to that of mechanical or electrical alone; we should focus the attention on those devices related to the field of tissue engineering. This new aspect of dentistry is growing very strongly in the field and is a strong support for tissue engineering and dental implantology. Nevertheless, we cannot ignore that today; the stem cells experimental use is a fundamental part of tissue engineering research.

We invite investigators to contribute original research articles as well as review articles describing current and expected challenges regarding this special issue.

Potential topics include, but are not limited to:

• Technologies using the concepts of tissue engineering
• Reports on hard and soft tissue engineering and their utility for dental implant therapy
• Current strategies used for maxillary reconstruction, including the utilization of autogenous graft, allograft, synthetic materials (alloplast) and autologous nontransfusional hemocomponents, and stem cells experimental use
• Biomaterials: biodegradable and bioresorbable materials, as well as scaffold designs
• Characterization of new devices and their application in clinical practice, in the tissue engineering field
• Digital dentistry, including CAD/CAM and intraoral imaging, Computer-aided implant dentistry (e.g., design and fabrication of surgical guides), digital radiography (intraoral and extraoral; e.g., Cone beam computed tomography (CBCT)), occlusion, and TMJ analysis and diagnosis
• Advanced implant dentistry