HIGH QUALITY GEOMETRIC RECONSTRUCTION OF HUMAN MANDIBLE

This paper explores the reverse engineering of the relationship between a lower tooth and the lower mandible, along with potential finite element analysis methods. The primary focus of the study is to develop a high-quality computer model of the mandible with precise, continuous spline surfaces and to subsequently examine the tooth-bone relationship using this more accurate geometric model. Many of the studies reviewed employ a highly simplified model, where the individual layers of tooth and mandible bone are not distinctly analyzed. In contrast, our research emphasizes the reverse engineering of the tooth's integration into the mandible, enabling us to decompose the model into layers and conduct a comprehensive computer simulation of the entire structure. This approach allows us to assign different material properties to various regions of the model during the finite element analysis. This procedure is done by using scanned 3D (3-Dimensional) data in a mechanical CAD system the PTC Creo 8.