Digital prediction of smile line transition by using 2D photowrapping

Abstract

Dental practitioners often rehabilitate patients with excessive gingival display during the broad wide smile. The transition line is defined as the lip line, which depicts transition between the prosthesis and adjacent soft tissue. Correctly predicting and managing this transition line is especially important, as it determines esthetics when the patient smiles widely. Photowrapping is a digital technique used to trace the transition line on digital imaging and communications in medicine (DICOM) files by wrapping a 2-dimensional photograph onto the image, providing the soft tissue information required for esthetics and helping clinicians to determine accurately the need for bone reduction during implant planning. The imaging software program (Dolphin 3D; Patterson Dental Holdings, Inc) and photographs are used in this technique. This article presents a digital technique for tracing the dynamic smile line by photowrapping around the DICOM image.