It used to be a tough trade-off - spend years in braces to end up with straight teeth.

But that trade-off has just gotten a whole lot simpler.

Gresham doctor Tod Hardin's orthodontics office is one of just a handful in the Portland-area using a new technique called 'Sure smile.'

The method requires users to stay in braces roughly half the time of traditional braces.

Dr. Hardin uses a tooth scanner to create a three-dimensional, computerized model of a patient's teeth. He then straightens them on the computer, then ships them off to Texas. Once there, a robot actually shapes the wires.

"The robot is so accurate it can reproduce the wire that we see on the screen to an accuracy of within fifty microns," said dr. Hardin.

The method especially appeals to adults, who now make up one out of every five orthodontic patients. That's a 60 percent increase from just 10 years ago.

39-year-old Naomi Dehning is one of them. She didn't want to spend two years in braces, so she opted for sure smile. Within one year, she had the teeth she'd always wanted.

"I love them," Dehning told us. "this is what i was looking for."

The technology is more expensive than traditional methods, but dr. Hardin says that cost is offset by the quicker course of treatment.

More: QuickSmile.com

Even so, it's still not cheap - generally, between $5000 and $7000.

(KGW Producer Rich Kurz contributed to this story)