Model generation for dental simulation

1. A computer-implemented method of generating a 3D model for dental simulation, comprising:

reading a STL file describing the surface of a 3D object as a mesh of triangles having a volume, wherein the 3D object represents a tooth;

generating a voxel grid encompassing the 3D object, wherein the voxel grid contains a plurality of voxels;

identifying a subset of voxels of the plurality of voxels which are located within the volume of the 3D object, wherein identifying the subset comprises:

raster scanning each grid line of the voxel grid to identify points on cube edges which intersect with surface triangles of the 3D object;

determining vertices of the cubes having the intersection points;

determining which of the vertices are inside the triangulated surface of the 3D object described by the STL file based on a direction of facet normal of each triangle of the triangulated surface; and

identifying the subset of voxels which are located within the volume of the 3D object based on the vertices of the cubes determined as inside the triangulated surface of the 3D object;

generating a triangulated surface mesh using the intersection points, wherein the triangulated surface mesh surrounds the subset of voxels and defines the outer surface of the 3D model;

assigning a density value to each voxel in the subset of voxels, wherein the subset of voxels defines the solid volume of the 3D model, wherein different voxels in the subset of voxels have different density values; and

loading the 3D model into a dental simulation machine.

2. The method of claim 1 , wherein the file describes the surface geometry of one or more real teeth.

3. The method of claim 1 , further comprising outputting the 3D model to a display on the dental simulation machine.

4. The method of claim 1 , further comprising loading the 3D model into a simulation program.

5. The method of claim 1 , wherein the volume of each cube in the voxel grid is 0.2 mm 3 .

6. The method of claim 1 , wherein the step of generating a voxel grid comprises generating an axis-aligned minimum bounding box around the 3D object.

7. The method of claim 1 , further comprising extracting a portion of the STL file and generating a 3D model based on the extracted portion only.

8. A non-transitory machine readable storage medium storing instructions which, when executed by a processor, perform the method according to claim 1 .

9. A dental simulation machine comprising

means for selecting a 3D model generated in accordance with the method of claim 1 for use in a dentistry training software program;

means for displaying on a viewing screen, during execution of a training program, the selected 3D model.

10. The dental simulation machine of claim 9 , further comprising means for generating instructions to modify the 3D model during execution of the training program.

11. A device configured to perform the method of claim 1 .