Patent ID: 9020236
Filing Date: 2015-04-28
Classification: A61B,A61C,G01J,G06K,G06T,G16H

Abstract:
1. A method for intraoral imaging, the method executed at least in part on a computer system and comprising: obtaining a digital image of one or more teeth; detecting first and second boundaries of the one or more teeth; calculating, at each of the first and second boundaries, a boundary ratio of mean gray-scale values for the tooth area on one side of the boundary to mean gray-scale values for background areas on the other side of the boundary and storing the calculated boundary ratios in a memory; calculating a third ratio of the mean gray-scale values for the tooth area near the first boundary to the mean gray-scale values for the tooth area near the second boundary and storing the third ratio in the memory; forming and storing a vector that contains at least the calculated boundary ratios and the third ratio; classifying a tooth surface as either smooth or occlusal according to the stored vector; processing the digital image according to the tooth surface classification; and reporting the processing results.