The research and development of noncontact 3-D laser dental model measuring and analyzing system.

OBJECTIVE To research and develop a new laser scanning 3-dimensional digitization system for collecting, showing, and measuring the data of dental casts. MATERIAL AND METHODS According to the 3-dimensional measuring method, by using 2 pulsate motors to make the synthetic movement of the dental cast, a special semiconductor laser, and 2 special line array CCD, the 3-D data could be found anywhere on the surface of the dental cast. The program, developed with Visual C++ language under the Windows (Windows tm) system, can control the scanner, rebuild the 3-D graphics and measure the data of the dental cast. RESULTS The system offers 70 x 70 x 70 mm measurement scope, 0.01 mm resoling power, < 0.1 mm mean deviation, and 25 mins for single cast scanning. CONCLUSION The advantages of this system are its precision, simplicity, high efficiency, and wide range of measurements with complete direct view. This system also supplied new information that cannot be found with traditional measurement methods.