Аннотация:Physical models of the dental occlusion, such as dental plaster cast models, are routinely used in dental and in cranio-maxillofacial applications.For treatment planning and therapeutic applications, it is of critical importance to have a precise model of the structures in question.Improved imaging techniques and advances in software engineering have moved three-dimensional (3D) computer models from the research and development area into routine clinical application.The importance of high-resolution source imagery is well understood by surgeons.The influence of image processing in model generation is poorly understood in the surgical community and we hypothesize that this may be a source of significant error.In this paper, we evaluate the workflow for creating a virtual dental model using CT data and the impact that image processing decisions have on final virtual model accuracy.Individual image processing steps are explained and the magnitudes of their influence on model quality are demonstrated and compared.This study demonstrates that inappropriate image processing can introduce errors of similar magnitude as the use of inadequate source data.Finally, the study demonstrates that errors caused by inappropriate image processing amplify the inaccuracies of lowresolution source imagery and eliminate the benefits of high-resolution source imagery.
