3D root canal modeling for advanced endodontic treatment

More than 14 million teeth receive endodontic (root canal) treatment annually. Before a clinician's inspection and diagnosis, destructive access preparation by removing teeth crown and dentin is usually needed. This paper presents a non-invasive method for accessing internal tooth geometry by building 3-D tooth model from 2-D radiographic and endoscopic images to be used for an automatic prescription system of computer-aided treatment procedure planning, and for the root canal preparation by an intelligent micro drilling machine with on-line monitoring. It covers the techniques specific for dental application in the radiographic images acquirement, image enhancement, image segmentation and feature recognition, distance measurement and calibration, merging 2D image into 3D mathematical model representation and display. Included also are the methods to form references for irregular teeth geometry and to do accurately measurement with self-calibration.