ALEXANDRIA, Va., June 16 -- United States Patent no. 12,307,656, issued on May 20.
"Computer assisted dental methods for analyzing jaws" was invented by Patrick C. Bell (La Crosse, Wis.), Leo J. Malin (La Crosse, Wis.) and Thomas J. Arendt (Norwalk, Wis.).
According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "Example dental scanning methods for analyzing jaws of a patient involve taking multiple radiographic scans of the jaws, and/or models thereof, and then applying digital image analytics to shift the image of one scan to match that of another. The resulting properly scaled and shifted image serves as a virtual 3D jaw model that can be manipulated and analyzed to aid in various orthodontic and other dental treatmen...