Method for determining a mapping of the contacts and/or distances between the maxillary and mandibular arches of a patient

A method for determining a mapping of contacts and/or distances between teeth of a maxillary arch and a mandibular arch of a patient, comprising the following steps:

• obtaining mandibular kinetics recorded on the patient, said mandibular kinetics being recorded by locating and by recording, by means of a camera, displacements of markers attached on the one hand to the forehead of the patient and on the other hand to the mandibular arch, during mandibular movements of the patient,
• obtaining surface meshes of the maxillary arch and the mandibular arch and registering said surface meshes relative to one another,
• creating a reduced mesh of at least one of said arches, comprising selecting, in a surface mesh of the at least one of said arches, cells in which nodes are located at a distance of less than 1 cm from a surface mesh of an opposite arch,
• creating, for each cell of said reduced mesh of the at least one of said arches, a bounding box comprising a plurality of voxels surrounding said cell,
• using the mandibular kinetics, calculating a network of contacts comprising, for each voxel of the bounding box, information on the existence of a contact between said voxel and a node of the surface mesh of the opposite arch during a relative movement of the mandibular arch in relation to the maxillary arch,
• for each node of the reduced mesh, determining, using the network of contacts, the distance between said node and a node of the surface mesh of the opposite arch,
• applying a colour representative of said distance to each cell comprising said node, and
• displaying said colour on each respective cell of the surface mesh of the arch, so as to form a map of the distances between the teeth of the maxillary arch and the mandibular arch,
• wherein the mandibular kinetics is applied to animate the surface meshes of the maxillary arch and the mandibular arch and the display of colour is updated during this animation.

A method for determining a mapping of contacts and/or distances between teeth of a maxillary arch and a mandibular arch of a patient, comprising the following steps:

• obtaining mandibular kinetics recorded on the patient, said mandibular kinetics being recorded by locating and by recording, by means of a camera, displacements of markers attached on the one hand to the forehead of the patient and on the other hand to the mandibular arch, during mandibular movements of the patient,
• obtaining surface meshes of the maxillary arch and the mandibular arch and registering said surface meshes relative to one another,
• creating a reduced mesh of at least one of said arches, comprising selecting, in a surface mesh of the at least one of said arches, cells in which nodes are located at a distance of less than 1 cm from a surface mesh of an opposite arch,
• creating, for each cell of said reduced mesh of the at least one of said arches, a bounding box comprising a plurality of voxels surrounding said cell,
• using the mandibular kinetics, calculating a network of contacts comprising, for each voxel of the bounding box, information on the existence of a contact between said voxel and a node of the surface mesh of the opposite arch during a relative movement of the mandibular arch in relation to the maxillary arch,
• using the surface mesh of one of said arches, a volumetric structure is created adapted to encompass all of the positions of the at least one of the arches with respect to the opposite arch during the mandibular kinetics,
• for each position of the at least one of the arches and for each voxel of said structure, the distance is determined between the centre of said voxel and each node of the surface mesh of the opposite arch,
• it is determined whether each voxel is located inside or outside the surface mesh of the opposite arch and the voxels that are located inside said surface mesh are memorised, said voxels defining a contact between the maxillary arch and the mandibular arch,
• said contacts are accumulated for all of the positions,
• using said memorised voxels, a surface is constructed representing the limit envelope of the displacements of the teeth,
• on said surface, a map of the contacts and/or a map of the distances between the teeth of the maxillary arch and the mandibular arch is displayed.