Patent ID: 9396291
Filing Date: 2016-07-19
CPC Classification: A61C,G06F,G16H

Claim Text:
1. Computer-implemented method for digitally designing a dental restoration for a rest tooth using a tooth template and a Laplacian surface deformation, wherein the rest tooth is described by scanned data of the rest tooth or a dental model of the rest tooth, the tooth template is described by data of the tooth template, and wherein a normal direction to a surface at a point is the same as a normal direction to a tangent plane to the surface at the point, the method comprising the steps of: generating, in a processor, for display on a computer display, data sets for the rest tooth and tooth template depicted as objects; automatically deforming, via the processor, the tooth template towards the rest tooth by the Laplacian surface deformation such that a prepared part of the rest tooth, within a preparation margin, is covered by a portion of the tooth template; wherein the Laplacian surface deformation comprises: automatically generating a line going through a point on the surface of the rest tooth or the tooth template and which is directed along the normal direction to the surface at said point; when the line intersects with the tooth template and with the surface of the rest tooth, automatically choosing the intersection point of the line with the tooth template as a handle and the intersection point with the surface of the rest tooth as a target; and automatically deforming the tooth template; wherein the data of the tooth template comprises a mesh of polygons describing the surface of the tooth template, and wherein the Laplacian surface deformation further comprises using a handle that lies inside a polygon of the mesh of the tooth template.