Method for representing a patient's treatment site as data for use with a CAD or CAM device

A method for modelling an image of a surface of a treatment site on a patient, the method comprising the steps of:

• generating a plurality of sets of data values for a plurality of voxels defining a three dimensional object, the data values within each set corresponding to a property of a three-dimensional object along the first and a second dimension, the object defining the treatment site, each set of data values corresponding to the property at one of a plurality of predetermined positions along a third dimension;
• identifying the voxels that define the surface;
• measuring a magnitude of each identified voxel;
• using the magnitude of each identified voxel to generate a corresponding vector;
• converting the vectors into computer-aided-design data suitable for use with a computer-aided design device by associating each vector with a pole of a control polygon of a non-uniform rational B-spline;
• converting the computer-aided-design data into slice data suitable for use with a stereolithography system;
• and
• forming a model of the image with the stereolithography system.

A method for producing a visual representation of at least a portion of an image of an object comprising the steps of:

• generating an image of an object including a structure of interest using a non-intrusive image generating device which produces a set of image data;
• filtering the image data to distinguish between image data points corresponding to a structure of interest and image data points corresponding to other structures;
• generating a surface representation of the structure of interest using the filtered image data;
• generating a set of vectors from the surface representation defining the boundary of the structure of interest;
• associating each vector with a pole of a non-uniform rational B-spline to create a series of such B-splines;
• generating one or more polynomial equations from one or more nonuniform rational B-splines;
• and
• displaying a visual representation of the structure of interest utilizing a display device which displays images utilizing polynomials generated from non-uniform rational B-splines.

A method for physically modelling an image of a surface of a structure of interest, the method comprising the steps of:

• generating an image of an object including the structure of interest using a non-intrusive image generating device which produces a set of image data;
• filtering the image data to distinguish between image data points corresponding to the structure of interest and image data points corresponding to other structures;
• generating a surface representation of the structure of interest using the filtered image data;
• generating a set of vectors from the surface representation defining the boundary of the structure of interest;
• associating each vector with a pole of a non-uniform rational B-spline to create a series of such B-splines;
• generating one or more polynomial equations from one or more nonuniform rational B-splines;
• converting the polynomial equations into slice data suitable for use with a stereolithography system;
• and
• forming a model of the image of the surface of the structure of interest with the stereolithography system.