Deep Learning, and … Dentists?
Ever chipped a tooth? Or, worse, have one knocked out? Assuming you have, the inevitable result is a premature trip to the dentist, followed by the oh-so-entertaining process of dental restoration . For those of you who haven’t been through this, your dentist basically clean outs the area, takes an impression (there might be 3-D scanning involved here if high-tech-wizardry is involved, but it might also just be a resin cast), makes and fits a “crown”, and then painstakingly shapes it into place, adjusting all the time. The last bit can be remarkably painstaking — there is a lot of custom handiwork involved here . It is quite the PITA, since not only does it have to fit in — plausibly!— with your teeth, but it also has to map into your bite, chewing, gripping etc. Get it wrong, and apart from just looking weird, it can end up making chewing difficult, cause TMJ disorders, and much worse. You’d think that CAD/3D-Printing could be used to avoid most of this PIT...