Method for facilitating dental diagnosis and treatment

摘要

A method for use in forming a preparation in a patient's jaw comprises the steps of: (a) generating electrically encoded data specifying pre-existing dental structure in the patient's jaw; (b) transmitting the data to a computer (24); (c) operating the computer (24) to generate on a monitor (34) connected to the computer a graphic representation of the pre-existing structure; (d) further operating the computer to predetermine an optimal position and an optimal orientation of a material removal tool (38) with respect to the pre-existing structure; and (e) additionally operating the computer to generate on the monitor a graphic representation of the tool in the optimal position and the optimal orientation relative to the pre-existing structure.