Medical Design and Outsourcing

  • Home
  • Medical Device Business
    • Mergers & Acquisitions
    • Financial
    • Regulatory
  • Applications
    • Cardiovascular
    • Devices
    • Imaging
    • Implantables
    • Medical Equipment
    • Orthopedic
    • Surgical
  • Technologies
    • Contract Manufacturing
    • Components
    • Electronics
    • Extrusions
    • Materials
    • Motion Control
    • Prototyping
    • Pumps
    • Tubing
  • Med Tech Resources
    • DeviceTalks Tuesdays
    • Digital Editions
    • eBooks
    • Manufacturer Search
    • Medical Device Handbook
    • MedTech 100 Index
    • Podcasts
    • Print Subscription
    • The Big 100
    • Webinars / Digital Events
    • Whitepapers
    • Video
  • 2022 Leadership in MedTech
    • 2022 Leadership Voting!
    • 2021 Winners
    • 2020 Winners
  • Women in Medtech

A Handful of Photos Yields a Mouthful of (Digital) Teeth

December 5, 2016 By Phys.org

A Disney Research team has developed a model-based method of realistically reconstructing teeth for digital actors and for medical applications using just a few, non-invasive photos or a short smartphone video of the mouth.

This new method can digitally reconstruct teeth even though some teeth are obscured in the photos or videos by the edges of the mouth or by other teeth.

“Image-based reconstructions of the human face have grown increasingly sophisticated and digital humans have become ubiquitous in everyday life,” said Markus Gross, vice president for Disney Research. “By combining creativity and innovation, this research continues Disney’s rich legacy of leveraging technology to enhance the tools and systems used to create more realistic and believable digital actors for films or video games.”

The researchers – from Disney Research, ETH Zurich and the Max Planck Institute for Informatics – will present the new method for teeth reconstruction at the ACM SIGGRAPH Conference on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques in Asia, taking place in Macao Dec. 5-8.

(Credit: Disney Research)

According to Thabo Beeler, a Disney research scientist, camera-based reconstructions have been problematic as what makes pearly whites pearly also makes them hard to capture in images—their translucent enamel and the diffuse underlying dentine. It’s also difficult to get people to open their mouths wide enough to provide cameras with an unobstructed view.

“On the upside, teeth are rigid and their shape variation from person to person is manageable,” Beeler said, “and as such teeth render themselves well to statistical modeling.”

To create their method, the researchers first constructed a model of human teeth rows, using high-resolution 3D scans of 86 different teeth rows from the field of human dentistry.

From this training data, a model of an average tooth row was created and natural variations in shape and spacing were calculated for each tooth.

Though imaging teeth in great detail is technically difficult, the researchers developed a way to recognize their edges – where teeth meet each other, meet the gums and meet the lips. With these outlines, obtained from several photos from different angles of a person’s mouth in a natural pose or from video taken while moving a smartphone from side to side, the model can be fitted to the person’s teeth.

In this way, the entire tooth row – including teeth entirely blocked from view of the camera – can be reconstructed from the model.

In a final step, natural coloring of the person’s teeth can be overlaid on the teeth reconstruction, providing a realistic looking set of teeth.

“Our algorithm only requires minimal user interaction and can operate on a set of individual, non-calibrated images, making teeth capture as easy and convenient as taking a few pictures or even a short video clip from a standard mobile phone,” Beeler said.

Related Articles Read More >

A portrait of Stryker executive Siddarth Satish
How Stryker includes users for product design in the digital age
A portrait of Stryker executive Tracy Robertson
Stryker leaders talk medtech trends at DeviceTalks Boston: ‘If you’re slow, you’re going to lose’
gBETA Medtech accelerator picks its next startups
Titan Medical
Titan Medical inks a $2.6M purchase order from Medtronic

DeviceTalks Weekly.

May 13, 2022
Our Pre-Post-DeviceTalks Boston episode, also MedtronicTalks replay with Gastro CMO Austin Chiang
See More >

MDO Digital Edition

Digital Edition

Subscribe to Medical Design & Outsourcing. Bookmark, share and interact with the leading medical design engineering magazine today.

MEDTECH 100 INDEX

Medtech 100 logo
Market Summary > Current Price
The MedTech 100 is a financial index calculated using the BIG100 companies covered in Medical Design and Outsourcing.
DeviceTalks

DeviceTalks is a conversation among medical technology leaders. It's events, podcasts, webinars and one-on-one exchanges of ideas & insights.

DeviceTalks

New MedTech Resource

Medical Tubing

Enewsletter Subscriptions

Enewsletter Subscriptions

MassDevice

Mass Device

The Medical Device Business Journal. MassDevice is the leading medical device news business journal telling the stories of the devices that save lives.

Visit Website
MDO ad
Medical Design and Outsourcing
  • MassDevice
  • DeviceTalks
  • MedTech 100 Index
  • Medical Tubing + Extrusion
  • Drug Delivery Business News
  • Drug Discovery & Development
  • Pharmaceutical Processing World
  • R&D World
  • About Us/Contact
  • Advertise With Us
  • Subscribe to Print Magazine
  • Subscribe to E-newsletter
  • Attend our Monthly Webinars
  • Listen to our Weekly Podcasts
  • Join our DeviceTalks Tuesdays Discussion

Copyright © 2022 WTWH Media, LLC. All Rights Reserved. Site Map | Privacy Policy | RSS

Search Medical Design & Outsourcing

  • Home
  • Medical Device Business
    • Mergers & Acquisitions
    • Financial
    • Regulatory
  • Applications
    • Cardiovascular
    • Devices
    • Imaging
    • Implantables
    • Medical Equipment
    • Orthopedic
    • Surgical
  • Technologies
    • Contract Manufacturing
    • Components
    • Electronics
    • Extrusions
    • Materials
    • Motion Control
    • Prototyping
    • Pumps
    • Tubing
  • Med Tech Resources
    • DeviceTalks Tuesdays
    • Digital Editions
    • eBooks
    • Manufacturer Search
    • Medical Device Handbook
    • MedTech 100 Index
    • Podcasts
    • Print Subscription
    • The Big 100
    • Webinars / Digital Events
    • Whitepapers
    • Video
  • 2022 Leadership in MedTech
    • 2022 Leadership Voting!
    • 2021 Winners
    • 2020 Winners
  • Women in Medtech