Patent ID: 9503282
Filing Date: 2016-11-22
CPC Classification: A61C,H04L,H04N

Claim Text:
1. A method for determining the position of orthodontic appliances in a bonding guide, the method comprising: obtaining a digital data file representative of the shapes of teeth of a dental arch; displaying a digital representation of the dental arch from the data file, the representation including a first tooth of the dental arch, and a second tooth of the dental arch, and a third tooth of the dental arch; using the digital data file to determine marginal ridge heights of the first tooth, second tooth, and third tooth; selecting an appliance height for the first tooth from a preexisting prescription for a plurality of teeth of the dental arch including the first, second, and third teeth, wherein the prescription includes a prescribed appliance height of each tooth of the plurality of teeth based on a prescribed distance from the occlusal plane height of each tooth; positioning a digital representation of an appliance on the digital representation of the first tooth at the prescribed height; determining the distance between the prescribed appliance height for the first tooth and the marginal ridge height of the first tooth, the distance being determined only after appliance height is selected; positioning a digital representation of an appliance on the digital representation of the second tooth at the prescribed height for the second tooth; modifying the appliance height on the digital representation for the second tooth to a distance from the marginal ridge height of the second tooth that is based at least in part on the determined distance between the selected appliance height for the first tooth and the marginal ridge height of the first tooth; determining the distance either between the marginal ridge height of the first tooth and the occlusal plane height of the first tooth or between the marginal ridge height of the second tooth and the occlusal plane height of the second tooth, the distance determined defining a prescription modifier distance; modifying an appliance height for at least the third tooth based at least in part on the addition of the prescription modifier distance to the prescribed distance for the third tooth; and positioning a digital representation of an appliance on a digital representation of the third tooth at the modified appliance height to create a modified digital representation of the dental arch including positioned first, second, and third appliances; and making an indirect bonding apparatus from the modified digital representation in order to locate the appliances relative to the apparatus according to the positioned heights.