Research on Teeth Positioning Based on Wavelet Transform and Edge Detection - Advances in Image and Graphics Technologies - page 284

Research on Teeth Positioning Based on Wavelet
Transform and Edge Detection

Zhou Zhou, Guoxia Sun, and Tao Yang

School of Information science and Engineering, Shandong
University , Jinan , 250100, China
[e-mail]

Abstract. Human Identification from Dental X-Ray Images is a new Biometric
Identification technology based on the use of modern digital image processing
technology. Tooth positioning is the initial step in the individual identification
system using dental X-ray image, and its main purpose is to find the accurate
position of tooth in the high-resolution X-ray images, which can reduce data
redundancy and provide support for the establishment of the dental images
database and subsequent processing. Automated positioning and cropping of
dental X-ray records is a challenging problem due to the heterogeneity of dental
records. This paper proposed an algorithm to process the dental X-ray images
using wavelet transform and edge detection techniques, respectively in horizon-
tal and vertical directions to find the position of tooth area. Simulation results
proved the accuracy and effectiveness of the method.

Keywords: X-ray image, teeth positioning, wavelet transform, edge detection.

1 Introduction

Biometric recognition refers to identity authentication using human biological charac-
teristics. Biological features usually have the qualities of uniqueness, measurability,
heredity and invariance. Natural teeth have strong abilities of resistance to corrosion
and degradation. The melting temperature of teeth is equal or greater than 1600 ℃ .
Physical and chemical changes of the internal fine structure of teeth could not occur
even when the teeth were burned near the melting point. This stability feature makes
teeth becoming an important method to identify persons of disasters such as criminal
cases and bombings [1].
Affected by modern medical image processing technology, dental images used for
individual recognition are mainly X-ray images. And panoramic images are widely
used for clinical diagnosis and treatments. In order to obtain the comprehensive diag-
nostic information, the range of the panoramic images generally includes alveolar
bones with tooth in it and the surrounding tissues, etc. Therefore, the Panoramic
images we get have huge amount of data and high precision and. There are also
much redundancy in these images. The area of Tooth from the whole image is
about 50%, and the other areas are meaningless to the recognition system using tooth.