An interactive geometric technique for upper and lower teeth segmentation

Abstract

Due to the complexity of the dental models in semantics of both shape and form, a fully automated method for the separation of the lower and upper teeth is unsuitable while manual segmentation requires painstakingly user interventions. In this paper, we present a novel interactive method to segment the upper and lower teeth. The process is performed on 3D triangular mesh of the skull and consists of four main steps: reconstruction of 3D model from teeth CT images, curvature estimation, interactive segmentation path planning using the shortest path finding algorithm, and performing actual geometric cut on 3D models using a graph cut algorithm. The accuracy and efficiency of our method were experimentally validated via comparisons with ground truth (manual segmentation) as well as the state of art interactive mesh segmentation algorithms. We show the presented scheme can dramatically save manual effort for users while retaining an acceptable quality (with an averaged 0.29 mm discrepancy from the ideal segmentation). © 2009 Springer-Verlag.