Indirect orthodontic bonding systems and methods for bracket placement

A method for fabricating indirect bonding trays for placement of orthodontic brackets, the method comprising:

• providing a digital model of a patient's teeth in maloccluded first positions;
• digitally moving the patient's teeth from the first positions to desired second positions of ideal occlusion in the digital model;
• digitally positioning digital brackets on respective surfaces of the patient's teeth while in the second positions in the digital model, the digital brackets each representing an outline of a 3D external geometry of a respective functional bracket;
• digitally restoring the patient's teeth from the second positions to the first positions while maintaining the positioning of the digital brackets on the respective surfaces of the patient's teeth in the digital model and while retaining the outline of the external geometry of the digital brackets, wherein the digitally restored model comprises one or more digital perforations each arranged between respective teeth thereof;
• forming a physical model of the patient's teeth by rapid prototyping based on the digitally restored model, the physical model comprising non-functional placeholder orthodontic brackets each positioned on a respective tooth of the physical model corresponding to the positioning of a corresponding one of the digital brackets on a corresponding one of the surfaces of the patient's teeth in the digitally restored model, and the physical model comprising one or more perforations each positioned between respective teeth of the physical model corresponding to the positioning of a corresponding one of the one or more digital perforations in the digitally restored model;
• sectioning the physical model along each of the one or more perforations to form sectioned physical models each of a portion of the patient's teeth;
• and
• forming indirect bonding trays using respective ones of the sectioned physical models, the indirect bonding trays comprising wells each corresponding to a respective one of the non-functional orthodontic placeholder brackets and each configured to receive a functional orthodontic bracket therein.