Computer-aided determination of occlusal contact points for dental 3-D CAD

Present dental CAD systems enable us to design functional occlusal tooth surfaces which harmonize with the patient's stomatognathic function. In order to avoid occlusal interferences during tooth excursions, currently available systems usually use the patient's functional occlusal impressions for the design of occlusal contact points. Previous interfere-free design, however, has been done on a trial-and-error basis by using visual inspection. To improve this time-consuming procedure, this paper proposes a computer-aided system for assisting in the determination of the occlusal contact points by visualizing the appropriate regions of the opposing surface. The system can designate such regions from data of the opposing occlusal surfaces and their relative movements can be simulated by using a virtual articulator. Experiments for designing the crown of a lower first molar demonstrated that all contact points selected within the designated regions completely satisfied the required contact or separation during tooth excursions, confirming the effectiveness of our computer-aided procedure.