Stereo-Photogrammetric Mapping of Tooth Replicas Incorporating Texture

Commercial digital photogrammetric software has been applied to convergent stereoscopic photography of human tooth replicas prepared to exhibit optical texture resulting in successful generation of 3D coordinate data. Tooth replicas were imaged using a semi-metric 35 mm camera and f = 100 mm macro lens on extension bellows. Model precision was within acceptable limits of 12  μ m or better for manual target matching and 21  μ m or better for automatic image matching. Further improvement in optical texture is required to achieve automatic image matching precision comparable to that of manual target matching. Small errors in interior orientation parameters attributed to instability in the bellows as well as small errors in the relative orientation resulted in some systematic errors. The use of a fixed camera lens system is expected to reduce these errors. When combined with commercially available, moderately priced, digital SLR cameras this brings 3D model generation closer to everyday clinical dental practice.