Patent ID: 9572636
Date: 2017-02-21
CPC Classifications: A61C,G06F,G06T

Claim:
1. A method of finding ideal contact points on a tooth, comprising the steps of: (a) in-vivo scanning said tooth with a hand-held optical scanner by projecting frames of patterns on surface of said tooth and receiving reflected frames, wherein said reflected frames are reflected off of said surface of said tooth; (b) receiving said reflected frames in a workstation and creating a virtual three-dimensional model of said tooth by registering said reflected frames to each other using software instructions in said workstation; (c) defining a tooth axes system (TAS) for said virtual three-dimensional model of said tooth; wherein said TAS comprises an origin, an x-axis in the mesial and distal directions, a y-axis in the labial and lingual directions and a z-axis in the occlusal and gingival directions; (d) intersecting surface of said virtual model of said tooth with an x-y plane based up on said tooth axes system for said tooth; and (e) finding most mesial point and most distal point on said intersected surface of said virtual model of said tooth; whereby said most mesial point and said most distal point are two ideal contact points for said tooth.