Calibrated segmentation of CBCT and CT images for digitization of dental prostheses

State of the art computer aided implant planning procedures typically use a surgical template to transfer the digital 3D planning to the operating room. This surgical template can be generated based on an acrylic copy of the patient's removable prosthesis--the so-called radiographic guide--which is digitized using a CBCT or CT scanner. Since the same accurate fit between the surgical template and the patient as with the radiographic guide and the patient should be ensured, a procedure to accurately digitize this guide is needed.

A procedure is created to accurately digitize radiographic guides based on a calibrated segmentation. Therefore, two steps have to be executed. First, during a calibration step a calibration object is CBCT or CT scanned and a calibration algorithm which results in an optimal threshold value is executed. Next the guide is CBCT or CT scanned and a 3D model is created using the obtained optimal threshold. To validate our method, we compared a high accuracy laser scanned copy of the guide with the generated 3D model by creating a distance map between both models.

The procedure was performed for different CBCT and CT scanners, and the digitization error for each scanner was defined. The 90th percentile error measured on average 0.15 mm, which was always less than the applied voxel size for all CBCT and CT test scans.

The calibration procedure evaluated in this study solves the known problem of digitizing a radiographic guide based on non-standardized gray value CBCT images. The procedure can easily be executed by a clinician and allows an accurate digitization of a radiographic guide using a CBCT or CT scanner. Starting from this digitization, an accurate surgical template can be made which has a good fit on the patient's remaining teeth and surrounding soft tissues.