A novel 3D morphing approach for tooth occlusal surface reconstruction

作者：Zheng Shu Xian; Li Jia^*; Sun Qing Feng

来源：CAD Computer Aided Design, 2011, 43(3): 293-302.

DOI：10.1016/j.cad.2010.11.003

• Dental CAD/CAM
• Occlusal surface
• Feature points
• Snake model
• RBF
• Morphing

Reconstruction of the tooth occlusal surface is an important aspect of dental CAD systems. The design surface should fit to the existing tooth articulation and keep the morphological features of the generic teeth. This paper presents the use of a 3D morphing technique to reconstruct the missing inlay or crown occlusal surface. This method involves three necessary steps of tooth cavity contour extraction, feature points identification and tooth surface deformation. Because the missing occlusal surface is often determined by the outline of the cavity inside the remaining tooth, the cavity contour is tracked firstly by a 3D optimal path searching algorithm. Then through identifying a number of corresponding feature points on the standard tooth and the remaining tooth by a Snake model algorithm, the method uses a mapping function called Radial Basis RBF) to define the spatial relations of all points in both teeth, and interpolate the intermediate feature positions, such that the standard tooth surface is deformed into alignment, and the missing surface is determined. This presents a direct and simple method to automatically reconstruct the occlusal surface. The corresponding features are fully considered in the morphing algorithm, consequently the morphological features of the tooth are well retained.

• 出版日期2011-3
• 单位天津大学