System and methods for combination treatments of dental patients
AssigneeAlign Technology, Inc.
InventorsHuafeng Wen, Eric Kuo, Amir Abolfathi, Loc X. Phan, Peter G. Knopp
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
Systems and methods for fabricating a dental template to position an object on a patient's tooth to move the tooth from an initial position to a target position are disclosed. The system digitizes a model of the patient's tooth at the initial position; places an object on the tooth model at the target position; determines the position of the object at the initial position; and fabricates the dental template to locate the object on the patient's tooth.
Claims23
A method of fabricating a dental template to position a plurality of brackets on a patient's teeth to move at least one of the teeth from an initial position to a subsequent position, the method comprising:
- providing a digital model of the patient's teeth in their initial positions;
- determining a target position for each of the brackets on the digital teeth model;
- creating a bracketed model comprising placing virtual representations of the brackets on the digital teeth model at the target positions;
- creating a scaled teeth model by scaling up the digital teeth model;
- locating the bracketed model within the volume of the scaled teeth model;
- generating a template model, the generating comprising removing a volume from the scaled teeth model corresponding to the volume of the located bracketed model so as to create teeth receiving cavities within the scaled teeth model, and further removing portions of the scaled teeth model so as to create a plurality of openings to the positions of the virtual brackets;
- and
- directly fabricating the dental template from the template model, wherein the template comprises multiple openings, each opening configured to guide a bracket into the target position on one of the patient's teeth after the template is placed over the patient's teeth.
A method for fabricating a dental template to position a bracket on a patient's tooth, the method comprising:
- providing a digital model of the patient's tooth at an initial tooth position;
- providing a final position for the tooth on the digital model;
- placing a virtual representation of the bracket on the tooth in its final position;
- determining a location of the bracket on the tooth in its initial position by backtracking from the placement of the bracket on the tooth in its final position;
- creating a scaled digital model of the tooth by scaling up the digital model;
- generating a template model, the generating comprising removing a volume from the scaled tooth model corresponding to the volume of the digital model and positioned bracket so as to create teeth receiving cavities within the scaled tooth model, and further removing a portion of the scaled tooth model so as to create an opening to the backtracked position of the bracket representation;
- and
- fabricating a dental template from the template model.
A method for fabricating a dental template for positioning a plurality of orthodontic brackets on a patient's teeth, the method comprising:
- providing a digital model of the patient's teeth in their initial positions;
- determining a target position on the digital teeth model for positioning of each of one or more virtual brackets;
- creating a scaled teeth model by scaling up the digital teeth model;
- generating a template model, the generating comprising removing a volume from the scaled teeth model corresponding to the volume of the digital teeth model and positioned virtual brackets so as to create teeth receiving cavities within the scaled teeth model, and further removing portions of the scaled teeth model so as to create a plurality of openings to the target positions of the brackets;
- and
- fabricating the dental template from the template model.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.