Dental Arch3D Direct Detection System from the Patient's Mouth and Robot for Implant Positioning

This paper describes a three-dimensional structured light scanning system to generate a virtual model of a dental arch, from the patient's mouth, and the scheme of a 2 + 1 DOF (degree of freedom) parallel/serial Robot for implant positioning, both positioned on a platform held in a fixed position with respect to the patient's head. Presently, dental prosthesization requires quite a long time to be completed. This process, in fact, involves the detection of the shape of the dental arch, its plaster model generation, scanning of it, prosthesis preparation and its implant. The procedure is even longer when use of dental implants is required, while early loading of the implants is considered a positive solution. Current research effort is focused on the development of devices for the direct intra-oral determination of the shape of dental prostheses and inserts. These devices, however, are able to detect limited portions of the dental arch, since they must be hand-held by the doctor without external supports, and this may produce relatively large errors due to the sum of relatively small ones. Furthermore, to place an implant correctly, the doctor can use a new system to guide the implant position, but this requires sending the information in Sweden to obtain a special mask in return.