Teeth segmentation using dental CT data

Cone-beam dental computerized tomography has been introduced as a system geared towards maxillofacial imaging, which is gradually becoming a common tool within the dental industry. Segmentation of teeth from dental CT data is vital for a variety of computer-aided procedures such as dental implants, orthodontic planning and cosmetic surgeries. Teeth segmentations near soft tissue structures can help clinicians to assess the quality of a patient´s teeth more easily. Moreover, the ability to identify particular regions surrounding teeth can help to provide better image results generated using 3D surface/volume rendering techniques. This paper, presents an experimental study for teeth segmentation employing two different thresholding techniques. The performances of these techniques are compared with each other. The experimental results show that there is a noticeable difference in segmentation quality between the two methods presented in this paper.