A 3D reconstruction of the human jaw from a single image

Accurate 3D modeling of the human teeth/jaw helps patients avoid the discomfort of the mold process, and improves the data accuracy for oral orthodontists and dental care personnel. Since the surface of the human tooth is almost textureless, Shape from Shading (SFS) has been successfully adopted in solving this problem. In this paper, we attempt to improve the limitations of previous 3D tooth reconstruction algorithms by developing a new approach for shape reconstruction from single image shading with Two-Dimensional Principle Component Analysis (2D-PCA) shape priors. The surface reflectance is modeled using Oren-Nayar-Wolff model which accounts for the retro-reflection case and we experimentally prove that the teeth surface follows the microfacet theory. Our formulation exploits the shape priors as extracted from a set of training CT scans of real human jaws. Our experiments provide promising quantitative metric results for the proposed approach. This work is fundamental for establishing an optical-based approach for reconstructing the human jaw that is inexpensive and does not use ionizing radiation.