Registering shape data extracted from intra-oral imagery to digital reconstruction of teeth for determining position and orientation of roots

A method of digital reconstruction of a tooth, wherein the digital reconstruction includes a crown and a root, the method comprising:

• receiving shape data of a crown of the tooth and volumetric imagery of the crown and a root of the tooth, the shape data and the volumetric imagery being of the tooth at a first position;
• determining elements that represent one or more boundaries of the crown in the shape data;
• registering the determined elements in the shape data with the volumetric imagery to identify a corresponding region of the tooth in the shape data and a corresponding region of the tooth in the volumetric imagery;
• selecting data of the volumetric imagery in the corresponding region of the volumetric imagery;
• building the root of the digital reconstruction using the selected data;
• determining a position and an orientation of the root of the tooth subsequent to registering the determined elements;
• acquiring an image of the crown of the tooth at a second position different from the first position subsequent to a movement of the tooth;
• and
• combining shape data of a corresponding region of the crown extracted from the image to the corresponding region of the crown of the digital reconstruction.