Planmed Brand Guidelines: Planmeca’s Finnish Mammography & Extremity CT Maker

A dental maker turns to mammography.

Planmed is the medical-imaging arm of a Finnish dental-equipment group. Its parent, Planmeca Oy, was founded in 1971 by Heikki Kyöstilä, English Wikipedia says. In the 1970s it made dental stools and instrument cabinets before moving on to patient chairs and dental units, and in the 1980s it introduced a panoramic X-ray device; the article says Planmeca’s products are designed and made in Helsinki.

In 1987 Planmeca extended its design and manufacturing into medicine by founding Planmed Oy, Planmed says in the history on its website. Its first product was a mammography unit, the Planmed Sophie, introduced at the 1989 meeting of the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA). The company says the Sophie received an honorary mention in the Pro Finnish Design competition in 1990.

The US Food and Drug Administration’s 510(k) database gives an independent record of that early range. It lists the Planmed Cytoguide, a guidance system for stereotactic breast biopsy, cleared in November 1992; a modification to the mobile Sophie in 1994; the Sophie mammography unit in 1995; and the Sophie Classic in 1997. Planmed’s own timeline adds the Twincomp compression system in 1998 and the MaxView breast positioning system, introduced in 1999, with deliveries from 2000, when it also showed a digital spot stereotactic system.

From Sophie to Clarity, and Verity.

Planmed’s move to digital mammography came in the 2000s. It says it launched the Nuance Classic, built to be upgraded to full-field digital imaging, at RSNA in 2004 and delivered its first fully digital unit, the Planmed Nuance, in 2005. The FDA database lists the Sophie Nuance Classic in November 2004 and a Nuance DigiGuide stereotactic system in 2012. A Nuance Excel with a larger detector and software for computer-aided detection followed, the company says.

In 2010 Planmed went beyond mammography with Planmed Verity, a cone-beam CT scanner for 3D imaging of the arms and legs; its website now also lists the scanner for head and neck imaging. A Planmed release distributed by PR Newswire in February 2013 announced its US clearance, and the FDA database dates that clearance to 1 February 2013, with further Verity clearances in 2015, 2018 and 2022. The release said the scanner carried the CE mark, had been in clinical test use at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston and would be shown at the American Association of Orthopaedic Surgeons meeting in Chicago in March 2013; sales in North America were handled by Planmed USA, Inc. of Roselle, Illinois. In September 2025 the FDA cleared a newer extremity CT, the Planmed XFI.

In 2016 Planmed introduced the Planmed Clarity family of digital mammography systems, including a version for digital breast tomosynthesis, the company says. The FDA database lists a 510(k) clearance for Planmed Clarity in December 2017 and for the Clarity 2D and Clarity S in 2020. The website today offers the Clarity 3D, Clarity+, Clarity S and Clarity 2D, the Envision series and a veterinary line.

The software around the scanners also comes from inside the group. Planmed’s website lists Planmeca Romexis Medical, which carries the dental parent’s name, among the programs for the Verity, alongside its own Verity Manager and a bone-analysis program from Disior. English Wikipedia says Planmeca introduced Romexis in the 2000s for handling patient images, and that more than 98 per cent of Planmeca’s own production is exported, to over 120 countries.

Consoles, probes and radiology suites.

Ultrasound and medical imaging makers sell to a small, expert audience, and their brands are built to be read in clinical rooms rather than shop windows. A typical ultrasound system is a grey and white console on wheels, parked beside a hospital bed, with a touch panel, a keyboard of controls and a row of probes hanging from its side. The maker’s name usually sits small on the front or the monitor frame; the shape, the colour of the plastics and the layout of the controls do much of the brand’s work.

The screen matters as much as the shell. Scan screens are typically dark and blue-grey, with the greyscale image at the centre, and makers give their measurement tools, presets and assistant features their own product names. Newer handheld scanners shrink the console to a single probe that connects to a phone or tablet, so the app becomes the visible face of the brand.

Larger imaging equipment, such as X-ray, CT, MRI and mammography systems, lives in radiology suites, where the machine is often a white ring or open frame in a quiet room. Here the brand appears on the gantry, in the room’s lighting and on the operator console next door. Several makers in this guide build dedicated or open MRI and digital radiography alongside ultrasound.

Much of this branding is shown first at trade fairs. The annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA) in Chicago and the European Congress of Radiology (ECR) are where makers launch systems, stage booths and present new software, and both Samsung and Esaote have used them for product introductions. Ownership also changes often in this field: brands pass between state groups, investors and larger industrial companies while keeping their names.

Design prizes and a family group.

Design is central to how Planmed presents itself. Its design page says its devices have been described as “approachable” and lists its recent awards: for the Verity, a Red Dot product-design award and an honorary mention in Finland’s Fennia Prize in 2012, the year the scanner also won gold and Best in Show at the US Medical Design Excellence Awards; and for the Clarity 2D and 3D, a Red Dot award and a Good Design award in 2016 and the Fennia Prize in 2017. The company says it works with universities, hospitals and research institutes on its development.

Planmed remains part of the Planmeca Group, headquartered in Helsinki, which Planmeca describes as privately owned. Planmed’s website lists the group’s other businesses as including Planmeca, the dental-supply chain Plandent, the hand-instrument maker LM-Instruments and the German dental maker KaVo of Biberach, which it says joined the group in 2022; the same site describes Kyöstilä as the group’s president and main owner. Planmed says its quality system is certified to ISO 9001 and ISO 13485 by DNV, that its products sold in Europe carry the CE mark, and that its systems have gone to more than 80 countries since 1987.

For a design guide, Planmed shows how a medical maker can make ergonomics and calm form part of its identity, and point to design prizes to back that up. Compare Siemens Healthineers and GE HealthCare, two other makers of medical imaging systems. For this guide we use a deep slate, an ice blue and a birch white with a soft sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Planmed’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.