Towards a Complete Computer Dental Treatment System

This paper introduces the production of 3D virtual clinic to help dentists in their treatment. To achieve this goal, different scientific areas are integrated such as: computer graphics, pattern recognition, computer vision, information technology and finite element machine (FEM). The proposed system includes the following tools; patient information system, automatic 2-D cephalometrics, 3-D cephalometrics, 3-D visualization, surgical planning, 3-D registration, soft tissue simulation, pre and post treatment analysis, etc. Acquisition of the 3D virtual model of the patient is the foundation of this work. The CT slides of the patient´s head (soft and hard tissues) are collected in a DICOM (Digital Imaging and Communication in Medicine) format. These slides are then compiled to build up the patient´s 3D model. Using ray-casting volume rendering technique, a digital computer based 3D replica is built. The theme also includes the detection of defective skeletal and dental areas by applying the appropriate diagnostic procedures. Based upon the diagnostic outcome, the necessary changes are executed; manipulation of the virtual 3D image and evaluation of the final result after rectification will be possible.