Development of CAD Tools for the design process of corrective dental aligners

The design of a customized prosthesis using computer aided design & manufacture (CAD/CAM) may have significant advantages over handicraft approaches in terms of speed and accuracy. A way to allow doctors to exploit the potential advantages of CAD, could be to try to automate the CAD package. In the paper this approach has been proposed for the design process of corrective dental aligners, custom made orthodontic implants, worn to straighten a misaligned dentition without using traditional braces. An application based on Rhino CAD is here described which shows all the step-by-step instructions needed to virtually align the patient's dentition. Tools for controlling the right position of each tooth are provided (movements, rotations, reference curve, according to the dentist’s practice), as well as the possibility to undo in the past positions thanks to a history-based approach implemented separately for each tooth. Once the final position of the teeth has been reached, and so a virtual impression of the correct denture is taken within the CAD environment, the aligners can be manufactured using Rapid Prototyping technologies. Case studies will be provided.