Medicim Nv

Nobel Biocare Services, Ag

Wouter Mollemans

Filip Schutyser

Veerle Wouters

Pieter Van Leemput

Pascal Kunz

Paul Suetens

Dirk Loeckx

Gwen Swennen

Vincent Masselus

Johannes Keustermans

Pieter De Groeve

Dirk Abbeloos

Bart Goris

Tinne Van Delm

Kevin Suestens

Mathias De Somere

Nasser Nadjmi

Kevin Suetens

An Elen

Philip Dutre

The present invention provides a method for automating the trimming of the boundary region of a three dimensional (3D) open surface mesh model comprising an inner mesh region delineated by boundary vertices and edges. In a particular embodiment, the present invention relates to a method for automating the trimming of an open surface mesh representing an intraoral region.

Automated trimming of a surface mesh

A method is provided for obtaining an estimation of the shape, position and/or orientation of one or more existing teeth of a patient or of one or more teeth to be included in a dental restoration destined to replace one or more missing teeth in a partially edentulous patient. The method involves adapting a virtual teeth setup to the intra-oral anatomical situation of the patient, wherein said virtual teeth setup includes separated surface meshes of individual teeth positioned in a dental arch or segment thereof. The virtual teeth setup is adapted by optimizing an energy function, which represents a quality measure for said virtual teeth setup, and using a statistical model, which describes for a given dentition or segment thereof a probability distribution for at least the shapes of individual teeth, the relations between shapes of neighbouring teeth and/or relations between positions and/or orientations of neighbouring teeth. The adapted virtual teeth setup resulting from said optimized energy function is subsequently used to estimate said sought for shape, position and/or orientation.

Method for estimating at least one of shape, position and orientation of a dental restoration

Methods, systems, and computer programs are disclosed for segmenting, from an image, a tooth's pulp region comprising a pulp chamber and root canals. Curvature-based shape recognition is performed at different spatial scales using smoothed versions of the image. An indication of a point or region is received, located in the pulp chamber and referred to as 'seed'. The seed is used as initial segmentation mask. An update procedure, iteratively carried out, comprises: (i) determining candidate image elements for updating the segmentation mask, comprising: (i&#x2212;1) in the first n iteration(s), a grayscale thresholding taking as reference the current segmentation mask; and, (i&#x2212;2) in at least one iteration, taking the curvature-based shape recognition into account; (ii) retaining, among the candidate image elements, a region of connected candidate image elements that comprises the seed; and (iii) using the retained region to update the segmentation mask.

Methods, systems, and computer programs for segmenting a tooth's pulp region from an image

A method of producing a dental splint comprising the steps of: obtaining a set of 3D surface data, the 3D surface data representing a surface of a patient's oral situation, and generating a support structure model in dependence on the 3D surface data, and producing the dental splint in dependence on the support structure model, wherein a 3D distance map image of the 3D surface data is used to generate the support structure model.

Digital splint

In embodiment of the invention provides a method of producing a dental splint comprising the steps of: obtaining a set of 3D surface data, the 3D surface data representing a surface of a patient's oral situation, obtaining a support structure model describing a dental splint configured to fit to a portion of the surface of the patient's oral situation, modifying an apical edge of the support structure model in dependence on the 3D surface data, producing the dental splint in dependence on the modified support structure model.

Virtual splint

An embodiment of the invention provides a method of producing a surgical template comprising the steps of: obtaining a set of 3D surface data, the 3D surface data representing a surface of a patient's oral situation, obtaining a support structure model describing a surgical template configured to fit to a portion of the surface of the patient's oral situation, obtaining planned bore position data, the planned implant position data describing the longitudinal axes of a set of one or more planned implant bore holes relative to the 3D surface data, automatically modifying the support structure model to provide support material for guide holes in the support structure model corresponding to the one or more planned implant bore holes, producing the dental splint in dependence on the modified support structure model.

Surgical template

A method for deriving shape information of a person's skull and dentition, including the steps of: taking an impression of the person's dentition, taking a first scan of the person's head, while the person is wearing the impression, taking a second scan of the impression alone, combining the scans, deriving the shape information from the combined scans. Advantageously the method further includes the step of taking a third scan of the person's head alone without the impression.

Method for deriving shape information

A method for capturing the shape of a dento-maxillofacial object out of volumetric image data of the dento-maxillofacial object is described. The method includes performing a segmentation of the volumetric image data with at least one calculated segmentation parameter indicative of the distinction between the dento-maxillofacial object and its background and derived from a calibration procedure. The method further includes capturing the shape of the dento-maxillofacial object from the segmented volumetric image data.

Method for digitizing dento-maxillofacial objects

A system and method for pre-operatively obtaining a prediction of a post-operative image of at least part of a body is disclosed. A 3D pre-operative description is determined of at least part of a body, and a pre-operative 2D photograph is acquired of the at least part of the body from any viewing position. The 3D pre-operative description is matched with the pre-operative 2D photograph, and a deformation field is determined for deforming the 3D pre-operative description. A predicted post-operative image of a 3D post-operative description of the at least part of the body is derived by means of the deformation field and the pre-operative 2D photograph.

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Antwerp, Belgium

Wouter Mollemans