公开(公告)号：EP1042729A4

公开(公告)日：2002-02-13

申请号：EP99950091

申请日：1999-10-04

Applicant: SHADE ANALYZING TECHNOLOGIES INC

Inventor： LEHMANN MARYANN ,  YOUNGS PERRY ,  VOCK CURTIS A

IPC: A61C19/04 ,  A61C19/00 ,  A61C19/10 ,  G01J3/46 ,  G01N21/25 ,  G06F19/00 ,  G06K9/62 ,  G06K9/64 ,  G06T1/00 ,  G06T7/00 ,  G06T7/40 ,  G06K9/00

CPC classification number: G01J3/46 ,  A61C19/00 ,  A61C19/10 ,  G01J3/462 ,  G01J3/463 ,  G01J3/508 ,  G01N21/25 ,  G06K9/4652 ,  G06K9/6202 ,  G06K9/6255 ,  G06T7/90

Abstract: A digital camera (12) connects to a tooth shade analyzer subsystem, e.g., a digital video processor (14), and a color display monitor for the electronic determination of the color of patient's teeth. Preliminarily, the camera captures (26) a series of digital color images of tooth shades corresponding to reference shade guides (34), and electronically compares the reference shades to an image of the patient's tooth. In a preferred embodiment the comparison is done over a set of pseudo-pixels, each corresponding to a group of pixels in an high-resolution camera. Once a match is found, it is communicated to a user of the system (52). In a specific embodiment the camera is equipped with a sleeve and illumination subsystems that help reduce the variations in the color of digital images due to external factors.