Patent ID: 7428481

Claim:
A computer-implemented method for generating a computer model of one or more teeth, comprising: receiving as input a digital data set of meshes representing the teeth; creating a parametric representation of the teeth from the digital data set, wherein the parametric representation comprises exposed tooth surface image data and unexposed tooth surface image data and further provides compression of the digital data set, the parametric representation comprising: a curved coordinate system with mappings to and from a (u, v) space wherein the coordinate system is based on the following equation: V=P (φ,θ)+ R *Direction(φ,θ) where V is the corresponding point in thee-dimensional (3D) space to (φ,θ, r), P and Direction are vector functions expressed in terms of φ and θ; and a function in the curved coordinate system to represent each tooth; and displaying the parametric representation of the teeth using the function and the coordinate system so as to provide a high-resolution image of the teeth.