A virtual anatomical 3D head, oral cavity and teeth model for dental and medical applications

Abstract

This paper presents a new hierarchical, modular and scalable mesh model of the human head, neck and oral cavity created by using anatomical information and computerized tomography (CT) data taken from the Visible Human Project. The described model, which is an extension of the MPEG-4 head model, covers the full geometry of the back of the head and the main organs of the oral cavity. The modular nature of the model makes it adaptable as a whole or per module, to any corresponding data of a specific human by means of a Finite Element Method (FEM). Our publicly available model can be used for creating virtual dental patient models as well as in other related applications in medicine, phonetics etc. © 2011 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.