Patents by Inventor Christopher E. Cramer

Christopher E. Cramer has filed for patents to protect the following inventions. This listing includes patent applications that are pending as well as patents that have already been granted by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO).

  • Publication number: 20240122463
    Abstract: Various apparatuses are disclosed (e.g., system, device, method, or the like) for guiding the capture and assessing the quality of an image, including dental images. The apparatuses may use trained neural networks to examine images and provide users feedback regarding image quality. The neural networks may be trained based on images within image groups that have been ranked based on perceived image quality.
    Type: Application
    Filed: October 16, 2023
    Publication date: April 18, 2024
    Applicant: ALIGN TECHNOLOGY, INC.
    Inventors: Guotu LI, Chao SHI, Chad Clayton BROWN, Christopher E. CRAMER, Phillip Thomas HARRIS, Adam SILL, Will NEVILLE, Ritvik BANSAL
  • Patent number: 11957541
    Abstract: Provided herein are systems and methods for scoring a post-treatment tooth position of a patient's teeth. A patient's dentition may be scanned and/or segmented. Raw dental features, principal component analysis (PCA) features, and/or other features may be extracted and compared to those of other teeth, such as those obtained through automated machine learning systems. A classifier can identify and/or output the post-treatment tooth position of the patient's teeth.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: December 23, 2022
    Date of Patent: April 16, 2024
    Assignee: Align Technology, Inc.
    Inventors: Guotu Li, Christopher E. Cramer, Chad Clayton Brown, Anton Spiridonov
  • Patent number: 11962892
    Abstract: A method of dental treatment may include receiving photos of a person's dentition, identifying a stage of a treatment plan administered to the person's dentition, gathering a three-dimensional (3D) model of the person's dentition corresponding to the stage of the treatment plan, projecting attributes of the 3D model of the person's dentition onto an image plane to get a projected representation of the person's dentition at the stage of the treatment plan, comparing the photos to the projected representation to derive an error image representing the comparison, and analyzing the error image for discrepancies, wherein the discrepancies represent one or more deviations of the person's dentition from the stage of the treatment plan.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: July 22, 2021
    Date of Patent: April 16, 2024
    Assignee: ALIGN TECHNOLOGY, INC.
    Inventors: Christopher E. Cramer, Rajiv Venkata, Leela Parvathaneni, Phillip Thomas Harris, Sravani Gurijala, Svetozar Hubenov, Sebastien Hareng, Guotu Li, Yun Gao, Chad Clayton Brown
  • Publication number: 20240108436
    Abstract: Methods and apparatuses (e.g., system, including software) for processing dental workflows. In particular, described herein are methods and apparatuses for processing dental treatment plan for aligning a patient's teeth when a dental professional submits a patient-specific prescription for a series of dental aligners.
    Type: Application
    Filed: October 3, 2023
    Publication date: April 4, 2024
    Inventors: Sergey GREBENKIN, Victoria BOGINA, Amarendra THUMMETI, Mitra DERAKHSHAN, Jeeyoung CHOI, Christopher E. CRAMER, Zalina NURMUKHAMETOVA, IIfat SABIROV
  • Publication number: 20240087097
    Abstract: In a technique to assess the blurriness of an image, an image of a face is received, the image including a depiction of lips. A processing device determines a region of interest in the image, wherein the region of interest comprises an area inside of the lips. The processing device applies a focus operator to the pixels within the region of interest, and calculates a sharpness metric for the region of interest using an output of the focus operator. The processing device determines whether the sharpness metric satisfies a sharpness criterion, and one or more additional operations are performed responsive to determining that the sharpness metric satisfies the sharpness criterion.
    Type: Application
    Filed: September 21, 2023
    Publication date: March 14, 2024
    Inventors: Chao Shi, Yingjie Li, Chad Clayton Brown, Christopher E. Cramer
  • Publication number: 20240087184
    Abstract: Methods, apparatuses, and systems are disclosed for simulating a tooth whitening procedure. The simulation may generally obtain a patient's two-dimensional or three-dimensional dental scan and color space convert color information from a first or native color space to a color space based on an International Commission on Illumination color space (CIELAB). The simulation may include modifying color information in the CIELAB color space then returning the modified color information to the native color space.
    Type: Application
    Filed: September 12, 2023
    Publication date: March 14, 2024
    Inventors: Yun GAO, Chao SHI, Christopher E. CRAMER
  • Patent number: 11903793
    Abstract: Methods for automatically segmenting a 3D model of a patient's teeth may include scanning a patient's dentition and converting the scan data into a 3D model, including a sparse voxel representation of the 3D model. Features can be extracted from the sparse voxel representation of the 3D model and input into a machine learning model to train the machine learning model to segment the 3D model into individual dental components.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: December 30, 2020
    Date of Patent: February 20, 2024
    Assignee: Align Technology, Inc.
    Inventors: Christopher E. Cramer, Roman Gudchenko, Dmitrii Ischeykin, Vasily Paraketsov, Sergey Grebenkin, Denis Durdin, Dmitry Guskov, Nikolay Zhirnov, Mikhail Gorodilov, Ivan Potapenko, Anton Baskanov, Elizaveta Ulianenko, Alexander Vovchenko, Roman Solovyev, Aleksandr Sergeevich Karsakov, Aleksandr Anikin, Mikhail Toporkov
  • Publication number: 20240024075
    Abstract: Provided herein are systems and methods for optimizing a 3D model of an individual's teeth. A 3D dental model may be reconstructed from 3D parameters. A differentiable renderer may be used to derive a 2D rendering of the individual's dentition. 2D image(s) of an individual's dentition may be obtained, and features may be extracted from the 2D image(s). Image loss between the 2D rendering and the 2D image(s) can be derived, and back-propagation from the image loss can be used to calculate gradients of the loss to optimize the 3D parameters. A machine learning model can also be trained to predict a 3D dental model from 2D images of an individual's dentition.
    Type: Application
    Filed: June 22, 2023
    Publication date: January 25, 2024
    Inventors: Guotu LI, Christopher E. CRAMER
  • Publication number: 20240029265
    Abstract: Methods and apparatuses (including systems and devices), including computer-implemented methods for segmenting, correcting and/or modifying a three-dimensional (3D) model of a subject's oral cavity to determine individual components such as teeth, gingiva, tongue, palate, etc., that may be selective and/or collectively digitally manipulated. In some implementations, artificial intelligence uses libraries of labeled 2D images and 3D dental models to learn how to segment a 3D dental model of a subject's oral cavity using 2D images, height map and/or other data and projection values that relate the 2D images to the 3D model. As noted herein, the dental classes can include a variety of intra-oral and extra-oral objects and can be represented as binary values, discrete values, a continuum of height map data, etc. In some implementations, several dental classes are predicted concurrently.
    Type: Application
    Filed: April 21, 2023
    Publication date: January 25, 2024
    Inventors: Chad C. BROWN, Yun GAO, Pavel AGNIASHVILI, Avraham ZULTI, Jonathan COSLOVSKY, Christopher E. CRAMER, Roman GUDCHENKO, Ofer SAPHIER, Adi LEVIN, Maayan MOSHE, Doron MALKA
  • Publication number: 20240000545
    Abstract: Embodiments include receiving image data comprising contours of teeth of an individual and generating a new image based on the image data and one or more parametric functions associated with tooth color that comprise a first variable for a first image axis and a second variable for a second image axis, wherein a shape of the teeth in the new image is based on the image data and a color of the teeth in the new image is based on applying the one or more parametric functions to at least a portion of the image data.
    Type: Application
    Filed: June 30, 2023
    Publication date: January 4, 2024
    Inventors: Christopher E. Cramer, Chad Clayton Brown
  • Publication number: 20230414322
    Abstract: A method may include: receiving facial image of the patient that depicts the patient's teeth; receiving a 3D model of the patient's teeth; determining color palette of the depiction of the patient's teeth; coding 3D model of the patient's teeth based on attributes of the 3D model; providing the 3D model, the color palette, and the coded 3D model to a neural network; processing the 3D model, the color palette, and the coded 3D model by the neural network to generate a processed image of the patient's teeth; simulating specular highlights on the processed image of the patient's teeth; and inserting the processed image of the patient's teeth into a mouth opening of the facial image.
    Type: Application
    Filed: May 2, 2023
    Publication date: December 28, 2023
    Inventors: Dmitry Yurievich Chekh, Samuel Blanco, Vladislav Andreevich Miryaha, Boris Aleksandrovich Vysokanov, Chad Clayton Brown, Christopher E. Cramer
  • Patent number: 11810271
    Abstract: In a technique to assess the blurriness of an image, an image of a face is received, the image including a depiction of lips. A processing device determines a region of interest in the image, wherein the region of interest comprises an area inside of the lips. The processing device applies a focus operator to the pixels within the region of interest, and calculates a sharpness metric for the region of interest using an output of the focus operator. The processing device determines whether the sharpness metric satisfies a sharpness criterion, and one or more additional operations are performed responsive to determining that the sharpness metric satisfies the sharpness criterion.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: December 3, 2020
    Date of Patent: November 7, 2023
    Assignee: Align Technology, Inc.
    Inventors: Chao Shi, Yingjie Li, Chad Clayton Brown, Christopher E. Cramer
  • Publication number: 20230352150
    Abstract: The present technology provides solutions for anonymizing patient data and in particular, for anonymizing potentially unique patient-identifying information while retaining clinically relevant information, for example, that can be used to illustrate the results or outcomes of a clinical intervention. In some aspects, a process of the disclosed technology can include steps for receiving patient data, wherein the patient data comprises a patient image corresponding with a patient, receiving treatment data, wherein the treatment data is based on a treatment goal for the patient, automatically determining, using one or more semantic controls, one or more anonymization parameters for the patient image; and generating, based on the one or more anonymization parameters, an anonymized patient image. Systems and machine-readable media are also provided.
    Type: Application
    Filed: April 27, 2023
    Publication date: November 2, 2023
    Inventors: Eric P. Meyer, Christopher E. Cramer, Doruk Cetin, Niko Benjamin Huber, Chad Clayton Brown
  • Patent number: 11800216
    Abstract: A method for dental treatment may include receiving photos capturing a state of a patient's dentition of a patient at a specific time, retrieving a first treatment plan to treat the patient's dentition, identifying an intended arrangement of the first treatment plan at the specific time, evaluating the photo parameters of the photos to generate alignment data to align the intended arrangement of the first treatment plan and the photos, generating an alignment mesh using the alignment data, the alignment mesh comprising a three-dimensional (3D) mesh representation of the patient's dentition at the specific time, performing an evaluation of the first treatment plan for modifications using the alignment mesh, and identifying proposed modifications to the first treatment plan based on the evaluation.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: July 22, 2021
    Date of Patent: October 24, 2023
    Assignee: ALIGN TECHNOLOGY, INC.
    Inventors: Christopher E. Cramer, Rajiv Venkata, Leela Parvathaneni, Phillip Thomas Harris, Sravani Gurijala, Svetozar Hubenov, Sebastien Hareng, Guotu Li, Yun Gao, Chad Clayton Brown
  • Patent number: 11730569
    Abstract: A system includes a memory and a processing device operatively coupled to the memory. The processing device generates one or more parametric functions associated with tooth color based on color data for teeth from a first image, wherein each of the one or more parametric functions comprises a first variable for a first image axis and a second variable for a second image axis. The processing device receives image data comprising new contours of the mouth, wherein one or more of the teeth have a different position in the image data than in the first image. The processing device generates a new image based on the image data and the one or more parametric functions, wherein a shape of the teeth is based on the image data and a color of the teeth is based on applying the one or more parametric functions to the image data.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: August 23, 2022
    Date of Patent: August 22, 2023
    Assignee: Align Technology, Inc.
    Inventors: Christopher E. Cramer, Chad Clayton Brown
  • Patent number: 11723748
    Abstract: Provided herein are systems and methods for optimizing a 3D model of an individual's teeth. A 3D dental model may be reconstructed from 3D parameters. A differentiable renderer may be used to derive a 2D rendering of the individual's dentition. 2D image(s) of an individual's dentition may be obtained, and features may be extracted from the 2D image(s). Image loss between the 2D rendering and the 2D image(s) can be derived, and back-propagation from the image loss can be used to calculate gradients of the loss to optimize the 3D parameters. A machine learning model can also be trained to predict a 3D dental model from 2D images of an individual's dentition.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: December 23, 2020
    Date of Patent: August 15, 2023
    Assignee: Align Technology, Inc.
    Inventors: Guotu Li, Christopher E. Cramer
  • Publication number: 20230225832
    Abstract: A method for dental treatment may include receiving a plurality of images of a patient's dentition, identifying, from the plurality of images, individual teeth of the patient's dentition, detecting, from the plurality of images, one or more attachments on the patient's dentition, assigning, based on each of the plurality of images, each of the one or more attachments to one of the individual teeth in each image, and combining the assignments of each of the plurality of images for attachment detection results.
    Type: Application
    Filed: January 19, 2023
    Publication date: July 20, 2023
    Applicant: ALIGN TECHNOLOGY, INC.
    Inventors: Christopher E. CRAMER, Chad Clayton BROWN, Guotu LI
  • Publication number: 20230225831
    Abstract: A method for dental treatment may include receiving a plurality of images of a patient, the plurality of images including the patient's dentition and an orthodontic appliance while the patient is wearing the orthodontic appliance, determining whether each of the plurality of images satisfy a plurality of detection criteria, segmenting the teeth in the images, segmenting the images to classify each pixel as being of the orthodontic appliance and the teeth, classifying the pixels of the image as being pixels belonging to a space between an aligner and a tooth, assigning the pixels belonging to a space to one or more of the teeth, determining a conversion between image-based spatial measurements to real-world spatial measurements by projecting a tooth from the treatment plan into a plane that corresponds to a plane of a corresponding tooth in the image, and determining a size of each of the one or more spaces.
    Type: Application
    Filed: January 19, 2023
    Publication date: July 20, 2023
    Applicant: ALIGN TECHNOLOGY, INC.
    Inventors: Christopher E. CRAMER, Chad Clayton BROWN, Guotu LI
  • Patent number: 11672629
    Abstract: A method may include: receiving facial image of the patient that depicts the patient's teeth; receiving a 3D model of the patient's teeth; determining color palette of the depiction of the patient's teeth; coding 3D model of the patient's teeth based on attributes of the 3D model; providing the 3D model, the color palette, and the coded 3D model to a neural network; processing the 3D model, the color palette, and the coded 3D model by the neural network to generate a processed image of the patient's teeth; simulating specular highlights on the processed image of the patient's teeth; and inserting the processed image of the patient's teeth into a mouth opening of the facial image.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: June 4, 2021
    Date of Patent: June 13, 2023
    Assignee: Align Technology, Inc.
    Inventors: Dmitry Yurievich Chekh, Samuel Blanco, Vladislav Andreevich Miryaha, Boris Aleksandrovich Vysokanov, Chad Clayton Brown, Christopher E. Cramer
  • Patent number: 11651494
    Abstract: Methods and apparatuses (including systems and devices), including computer-implemented methods for segmenting, correcting and/or modifying a three-dimensional (3D) model of a subject's oral cavity to determine individual components such as teeth, gingiva, tongue, palate, etc., that may be selective and/or collectively digitally manipulated. In some implementations, artificial intelligence uses libraries of labeled 2D images and 3D dental models to learn how to segment a 3D dental model of a subject's oral cavity using 2D images, height map and/or other data and projection values that relate the 2D images to the 3D model. As noted herein, the dental classes can include a variety of intra-oral and extra-oral objects and can be represented as binary values, discrete values, a continuum of height map data, etc. In some implementations, several dental classes are predicted concurrently.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: September 4, 2020
    Date of Patent: May 16, 2023
    Assignee: Align Technology, Inc.
    Inventors: Chad C. Brown, Yun Gao, Pavel Agniashvili, Avraham Zulti, Jonathan Coslovsky, Christopher E. Cramer, Roman Gudchenko, Ofer Saphier, Adi Levin, Maayan Moshe, Doron Malka