Claims
- 1. A method for determining a patient's tooth shade comprising the steps of:
- electronically imaging a patient's tooth to obtain an image which includes color information representative of tooth color;
- determining the patient's tooth color from the color information of the image; and
- identifying one or more tooth shades having a combined color corresponding to the determined tooth color.
- 2. The method of claim 1 wherein the patient's tooth color is determined by electronically displaying the color information of the image and by averaging the color information at selected locations of the image which correspond to different spatial locations of the patient's tooth.
- 3. The method of claim 2, which further comprises printing the electronically displayed color information of the image to produce a record.
- 4. The method of claim 1, which further comprises electronically storing the color information of the patient's tooth for use at a later time.
- 5. The method of claim 1 wherein the identification of tooth shade(s) is made by comparing the determined tooth color to a plurality of electronically stored tooth shades.
- 6. The method of claim 5 which further comprises electronically displaying both the identified tooth shade(s) and the color information of the image of the patient's tooth to enable a visual comparison to be made therebetween.
- 7. The method of claim 1 which further comprises communicating information which includes the identified tooth shade(s) to a laboratory for use in manufacturing a reconstructed tooth for the patient.
- 8. The method of claim 7 which further comprises reconstructing the patient's tooth by painting one or more porcelain layers onto a model of the patient's tooth, each of the layers of porcelain corresponding to the identified tooth shade(s) or a color fraction thereof.
- 9. The method of claim 1 wherein one of the patient's tooth or a tooth shade is imaged at a controlled, reproducible distance.
- 10. The method of claim 1 which further comprises providing a reference color to assist in determining the patient's tooth color from the color information of the image.
- 11. The method of claim 10 which further comprises surrounding the patient's tooth with the reference color before the imaging step.
- 12. The method of claim 1 which further comprises cosmetically whitening the patient's tooth before conducting the electronic imaging step.
- 13. The method of claim 1 which further comprises specifying data representing a combination of tooth shades that correspond to the determined tooth color.
- 14. The method of claim 13 wherein the combination of tooth shades are determined by comparing RGB data from known tooth shades to RGB data measured from the patient's tooth.
- 15. The method of claim 14 which further comprises communicating the combination tooth shade data to a laboratory for use in formulating color fractions of porcelain layers that correspond to the measured RGB data.
- 16. The method of claim 15 which further comprises storing the combination tooth shade data on a record before communicating the data to the laboratory.
- 17. A system for determining the tooth shade of a patient's tooth, comprising:
- a camera for capturing an image of the patient's tooth, the image including color information representative of tooth color; and
- a shade analyzer sub-system which electrically communicates with the camera, the shade analyzer including:
- a color processor for determining the color of the patient's tooth from the color information of the image; and
- a color correlation section for evaluating the color of the patient's tooth and for identifying a tooth shade having a color corresponding to the color of the patient's tooth.
- 18. The system according to claim 17 which further comprises an electronic storage medium for storing shade information representative of a plurality of tooth shades, each tooth shade corresponding to a different tooth color.
- 19. The system according to claim 17, wherein the camera is a color CCD camera comprising an array including a plurality of proximately located pixels.
- 20. The system according to claim 19, wherein the camera comprises three CCD arrays, each of the arrays collecting image data corresponding to red, green or blue.
- 21. The system according to claim 17, wherein the sub-system further comprises a section for integrating at least a portion of the tooth to determine an average color over that portion of the tooth by combining color fractions of known tooth shades.
- 22. The system according to claim 17, wherein the color correlation section includes sufficient memory for associating the color of the patient's tooth with one or more known tooth shades.
- 23. The system according to claim 17, which further comprises a monitor for simultaneously displaying color information of the tooth and tooth shade information so that visual comparisons can be made.
- 24. The system according the claim 23, which further comprises a printer for printing the color information displayed on the monitor for communicating this information to a laboratory for reconstruction of the patient's tooth.
- 25. The system according to claim 17, wherein the color processor includes electronic circuitry which determines RGB chromaticities of the color image, each of the plurality of tooth shades has a corresponding RBG representation of the tooth color, and the electronic circuitry quantitatively compares the RGB chromaticities with the RGB representation of each of the tooth shades, thus comparing or identifying a tooth shade based upon a comparison of the chromaticities and the RGB representations.
- 26. The system according to claim 17, which further comprises a reference card having a background color to enhance the image of the patient's tooth, the card optionally including an opening for receiving the patient's tooth or a reference shade.
CROSS-REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS
This application is a continuation of application Ser. No. 09/082,030 filed May 20, 1998, now U.S. Pat. No. 5,961,324, which is a continuation-in-part of application Ser. No. 08/494,979 filed Jun. 26, 1995, now U.S. Pat. No. 5,766,006.
US Referenced Citations (21)
Foreign Referenced Citations (1)
Number |
Date |
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WO0515731 |
Jun 1995 |
WOX |
Continuations (1)
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Number |
Date |
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Parent |
082030 |
May 1998 |
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Continuation in Parts (1)
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Number |
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494979 |
Jun 1995 |
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