Automatic drawing of customized removable partial denture diagrams based on textual design for the clinical decision support system.

Qualified diagrams of removable partial denture (RPD) designs created by dentists provide technicians with clear and dynamic information. Generating RPD design in the clinical decision support system (CDSS) can be achieved by producing the RPD design in a textual format and then transferring the design onto diagrams. The drawing of RPD diagrams automatically and efficiently for the given textual designs is still under investigation. A new workflow consisting of three major steps is developed to produce and visualize two-dimensional RPD design diagrams. Annotations and orientations of teeth are established from the base maps in the first step, and built-in rules are then incorporated to describe the variations caused by the interactions of the RPD components. Finally, the software draws each component using a series of curve functions. To validate the performance of the software, 112 RPD clinical design plans are randomly selected as inputs for the software, and the outputs are independently verified by experienced clinicians. The proposed methods are proven to be efficient and accurate and thus can be used to improve clinical quality.