Intra-oral scanner with color tip assembly

摘要

A technique to enable an existing monochrome camera in an intra-oral scanner to capture color images without making hardware changes to the camera. This operation is achieved by retrofitting a “tip” assembly of the scanner with red, green and blue light emitting diodes (LEDs), and then driving those diodes to illuminate the scene being captured by the scanner. Electronics in or associated with the scanner are operative to synchronize the LEDs to the frame capture of the monochrome camera in the device. A color image is created by combining the red-, green- and blue-illuminated images. Thus, color imagery is created from a monochrome camera and, in particular, by illuminating the screen with specific colors while the camera captures images. In this manner, single colored images are captured and combined into full color images. The system captures the color images with full resolution and sensitivity, thus producing higher quality full color images.

主权项

1. An apparatus, comprising:
a housing supporting a monochrome camera operative to capture a scene; a tip assembly supported in the housing, the tip assembly including a set of colored light emitting diodes (LEDs); electronics associated with the housing to drive the light emitting diodes to illuminate the scene being captured by the monochrome camera with one or more colors; and computer memory storing computer program instructions operative to adjust a frame capture from the monochrome camera based on illumination provided by the colored LEDs to generate a color image.