3D whole tooth model from CT volume using thin-plate splines

As the tooth root has similar bone density with the jaw where it is embedded, its complete boundaries are either missing or at low contrast in the computed tomography (CT) volume data. This paper proposes a consistent semi-automatic landmarks selection and replacing procedure, then uses thin-plate splines to deform a 3D geometric prior model to match the 3D patient CT volume, producing a "best-fit" patient specific polygonal mesh of the whole tooth.