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Systems and methods for substituting virtual dental appliances

Systems and methods for substituting virtual dental appliances description/claims

This application is a continuation of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 10/981,855 filed Nov. 5, 2004, the full disclosure of which is incorporated herein by reference.

The invention relates generally to computer-automated development of an orthodontic treatment and appliance. Orthodontics is the branch of dentistry that deals with the straightening of crooked teeth. Although there are many types of appliances that can be used by an orthodontist to straighten the teeth, the most common appliance is braces. Braces include a variety of appliances such as brackets, archwires, ligatures, and O-rings, and attaching braces to a patient's teeth is a tedious and time consuming enterprise requiring many meetings with the treating orthodontist. Consequently, conventional orthodontic treatment limits an orthodontist's patient capacity and makes orthodontic treatment quite expensive.

Before fastening braces to a patient's teeth, at least one appointment is typically scheduled with the orthodontist, dentist, and/or X-ray laboratory so that X-rays and photographs of the patient's teeth and jaw structure can be taken. Also during this preliminary meeting, or possibly at a later meeting, an alginate mold of the patient's teeth is typically made. This mold provides a model of the patient's teeth that the orthodontist uses in conjunction with the X-rays and photographs to formulate a treatment strategy. The orthodontist then typically schedules one or more appointments during which braces will be attached to the patient's teeth.

Historically, the practice of orthodontics has been a manual process that relied on the doctor's skills and judgment. A number of parties are creating and providing products and services that can be grouped together under the appellation ‘virtual orthodontics’. The principle elements of virtual orthodontics are representations of the teeth and of orthodontic components such as brackets and wire.

One of the values of virtual orthodontics is that the user can make choices among available components before actually implementing the treatment approach. For instance, an orthodontist can evaluate options by choosing different bracket prescriptions and features such as hooks or ligation methods before the brackets are applied to a patient's teeth.

Systems and methods are disclosed for performing virtual treatment using one or more dental appliances by receiving a digital model of a dental appliance; selecting a standard position and orientation; and mapping the digital model of the dental appliance to the standard position and orientation.

Advantages may include one or more of the following. The system allows the doctors to easily change or substitute different brackets during treatment planning. Thus, the doctor can simply select a different bracket and the system automatically places the new bracket in the proper position and orientation relative to its underlying tooth. This is achieved by having all brackets in the same spatial coordinate system or making use of a transform function to relate the coordinate systems of the brackets.

FIG. 1A illustrates an exemplary process to perform virtual treatment using one or more dental appliances.

FIG. 1B shows an exemplary process for substituting dental appliances.

FIG. 2 shows two different appliances, in this case brackets, in their own virtual spaces.

FIG. 3 shows the brackets of FIG. 2, isometrically displayed in the same virtual space.

FIG. 4 shows the substitution based on an alignment of the brackets' dimensions or features.

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