A system for digital reconstruction of gypsum dental casts.

A range scanner is developed that can scan a gypsum dental cast and reconstruct the cast digitally for display and storage purposes. The scanner is based on subtractive light and computes the range values using optical triangulation. A fiducial marker is introduced that, when attached to a dental cast at the time of image acquisition, makes it possible to integrate multiview range images of the cast without image registration. A method for calibrating the scanner is described and experimental results showing the accuracy of the scanner are presented.