Abstract: The method of tracking and navigation for a dental instrument uses feature extraction, a feature space transformation and a fusion procedure to detect the location of a target, such as a marker placed on a patient's jaw, as well as detecting the location of a dental instrument with respect to the target for guiding a dental practitioner during a procedure. Detection is performed by identifying potential locations for the target and then refining the potential locations based on information from previous detection frames. Given an initial estimate of the target's three-dimensional location, the estimate is improved through iteratively updated information.