A novel three-dimensional (3D) imaging technique is proposed herein to build a non-contact 3D dental probe for dental surface profile measurement, i.e., """"""""optical impression"""""""". Not only the proposed 3D dental probe is able to acquire accurate 3D images of teeth in a non-contact fashion (thus eliminates the deformation of teeth structure during conventional impression procedure), but also it can acquire 3D dental data at a high speed (thus solves the stabilization problems of the probe, patient, and jaws). The simple design and low-cost nature of the proposed 3D dental probe warrant its potential to become a viable commercial product.
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