New 3D optical digitizer for orthodontic applications

A new three-dimensional optical digitizer working with white light and high accuracy has been developed for applications in orthodontic diagnosis, to store and analyze data taken from plaster dental casts. The scanner consists basically of a triangulation device made of a CCD camera and an active light projector using Gray code and the phase stepping method to sample the surfaces under test. Dense clouds of 3D points of the object's surface, related to the device's reference system, are generated, from which very exact measurements can be taken. This technique allows us to greatly improve the accuracy of results that previously were obtained by using mainly manual methods. Our system has been tested successfully on many different samples.