Patent ID: 7097450

Claim:
A method including the determination of shade information of a dental object in a patient's mouth, comprising the steps of: determining color information of the dental object, wherein the color information is determined by: generating data of the dental object with an image generation device having a field of view, wherein the dental object and a reference implement having one or more regions of predetermined optical properties are positioned in the field of view of the image generation device, wherein the reference implement is adapted for use near the dental object in the patient's mouth; generating data of the reference implement with the image generation device, wherein the reference implement includes a positional location attribute, wherein based on the positional location attribute a position of the one or more regions of predetermined optical properties of the reference implement in the field of view of the image generation device is determined by a processing system without operator identification of the position in the field of view of the image generation device; generating color information of the dental object by adjusting the data generated of the dental object based on the data generated of the reference implement; and determining shade information of the dental object, wherein the color information is used to determine a closest match or matches of shade values in one or more regions of the dental object, wherein data for the shade values are stored in memory accessed by the processing system.