Image to Geometry Registration for Virtual Dental Models

In computer-aided design and manufacturing (CAD/CAM) for dentistry, the digital dentition model is usually acquired using intraoral scanner or impression model scanning before further processing. Both tooth shape and shade play important role in treatment planning for patient satisfaction with dental esthetics. However, most of current intraoral scanners cannot generate good enough color texture information. For impression model scanning, tooth shade is even lost when making impression. In the paper we consider the technique using the image-to-geometry registration method to map color intraoral photographs onto the virtual models. We investigate the automatic technique to accurately find correspondences of the digital model and the color intraoral photographs. This eliminates manual placement error of correspondence for the registration.