Determining a dental treatment difficulty

A non-transitory computer-readable medium having executable instructions that can be executed by a processor to cause a computing device to:

• receive a digital scan of a patient's dentition;
• gather, from a first virtual dental model rendered from the scan, first positions of a first tooth and a second tooth, the first tooth comprising an anterior tooth in the patient's dentition and the second tooth comprising a posterior tooth of the patient's dentition;
• gather, from a second virtual dental model, second positions of the first tooth and the second tooth in accordance with an orthodontic treatment plan;
• determine a reference line including connecting a first reference point for the first position of the first tooth and a second reference point for the first position of the second toothy wherein the second position of the first tooth and the second position of the second tooth are located a distance from the reference line;
• project a change in position of the first tooth from its first position to its second position;
• determine a first distance along the reference line by projecting the second position of the first tooth onto the reference line;
• project a change in position of the second tooth from its first position to its second position;
• determine a second distance along the reference line by projecting a change in position of the second tooth from its first position to second position onto the reference line;
• and assign to the patient's dentition one or more anterior-posterior correction treatment difficulty levels based on whether one or more of the first distance and the second distance exceed one or more orthodontic treatment thresholds.

A system for determining a dental treatment difficulty, comprising:

• a memory having computer-readable instructions stored thereon;
• and
• a processor coupled to the memory to execute the computer-readable instructions to:
• receive a digital scan of a patient's dentition;
• gather, from a first virtual dental model rendered from the scan, first positions of a first tooth and a second tooth, the first tooth comprising an anterior tooth in the patient's dentition and the second tooth comprising a posterior tooth of the patient's dentition;
• gather, from a second virtual dental model, second positions of the first tooth and the second tooth in accordance with an orthodontic treatment plan;
• determine a reference line connecting a first reference point for the first position of the first tooth and a second reference point for the first position of the second tooth wherein the second position of the first tooth and the second position of the second tooth are located a distance from the reference line;
• determine a first distance along the reference line by projecting a change in position of the first tooth from its first position to its second position onto the reference line, and a second distance along the reference line by projecting a change in position of the second tooth from its first position to its second position onto the reference line;
• and
• assign to the patient's dentition one or more anterior-posterior correction treatment difficulty levels based on whether one or more of the first distance and the second distance exceed one or more orthodontic treatment thresholds.

A computing device implemented method comprising:

• gathering a first dental model representing a dentition of a patient at a first stage of an orthodontic treatment plan, the first dental model including a first representation of an anterior tooth in an anterior portion of the dentition and a first representation of a posterior tooth in a posterior portion of the dentition, wherein the first dental model includes a first initial reference point for an initial position of the anterior tooth and a second initial reference point for an initial position of the posterior tooth;
• gathering a second dental model representing the dentition of the patient at a second stage of the orthodontic treatment plan, the second dental model including a second representation of the anterior tooth and a second representation of the posterior tooth, wherein the second dental model includes a first subsequent reference point for a subsequent position of the anterior tooth and a second subsequent reference point for a subsequent position of the posterior tooth;
• determining a reference line a connecting the first initial reference point and the second initial reference point, wherein the first and second subsequent reference points are located a distance from the reference line;
• projecting a change in position of the anterior tooth from its first position to its second position;
• determining a first distance along the reference line by projecting the subsequent position of the anterior tooth onto the reference line,
• projecting a change in position of the posterior tooth from its first position to its second position;
• determining a second distance along the reference line by projecting the subsequent position of the posterior tooth onto the reference line;
• assigning an orthodontic treatment difficulty identifier to the dentition of the patient based on whether one or more of the first distance and the second distance exceed one or more treatment thresholds.