Automatic contour detection from dental CBCT DICOM data

The algorithm described in this paper is part of a program supporting the process of teeth contour detection, segmentation and 3D reconstruction. The data is taken from dental conical tomographies. Automatic contour detection starts by filtering the image according to an adaptive threshold. The region of interest is established and the tooth contour is determined using the possible edge directions. The applied method is innovative for the contour detection, because it exploits the domain knowledge, where each tooth (incisor, canine, premolar, molar) has a certain shape. For touching teeth, the delimitation is automatically performed by drawing a line using the Bresenham algorithm. The algorithm will further contribute to the determination and treatment of teeth pathologies.