3D Visualization of an endontically treated tooth

This tooth was digitized with a microct at a resolution of 10x10x10 μm3 per voxel. The microct data were segmented with ImageJ/Fiji and converted to stl with Meshlab. The raw stl files hat over 7 million triangles. The stl files had to be reduced in size by a factor of 300 for this demo. Separate stl files exist for dentin, enamel and endo-treatment. The visualization uses WebGL. The library which was used to display the data is Three.js.

It takes upto 5 s to load the data. If the box stays black, reload the browser.

Move mouse AND: Click and hold left mouse button = Rotate, mouse wheel or click and hold middle mouse button = Zoom, click and hold right mouse button = Translate.

If you open the “Control Menu” then you can change the opacity and toggle the visibility some of the materials.

This website is a proof of concept that it is possible to achieve this result with open source software alone. But more important it is a test run for dental education. This tooth is a prototype only to develop the technology for routine application in dental teaching. We plan to use this tool to teach the root canal anatomy, the access cavity design and, last but not least, we can also evaluate the post-endodontic restoration design.