Bracket-Relief Shell Aligners for Concurrent Tooth Movement
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing orthodontic treatments face challenges in coordinating simultaneous incremental tooth movement through aligners and continuous movement through braces, leading to issues such as poor fit and ineffective appliance function due to asynchronous coordination between aligner-defined movements and braces-induced movements.
Innovation Solution
Designing aligners with braces-receiving relief portions that accommodate bracketed teeth, allowing for precise alignment by predicting and accommodating tooth movement paths, including non-linear movements, and incorporating a buffer for deviations, to ensure seamless integration of both systems.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Measurement precision
If aligners are designed to accommodate incremental tooth movement, then tooth repositioning precision is improved, but coordination with continuous braces movement becomes difficult leading to poor fit
Solution Approach 1:
The aligner design incorporates a relief portion that dynamically adapts to the bracket's position during continuous tooth movement. The relief portion is configured to move with the bracket, allowing the aligner to maintain proper fit while accommodating the continuous movement induced by braces, thus resolving the contradiction between precision and fit reliability.
Solution Approach 2:
The aligner is segmented into a tooth-receiving cavity portion and a relief portion. The relief portion is specifically designed to accommodate the bracket while the tooth-receiving cavity maintains precise tooth positioning. This segmentation allows different parts of the aligner to perform different functions simultaneously, resolving the fit coordination issue.
2Productivity
If braces are used for continuous tooth movement, then treatment efficiency is improved, but coordination with aligner-defined incremental movements becomes difficult
Solution Approach 1:
The relief portion acts as an intermediary element between the braces system and the aligner system. It mediates the interaction by providing a space that accommodates the bracket during continuous movement, allowing both systems to function simultaneously without complex coordination requirements.
3Measurement precision
If aligners are designed with precise tooth positioning, then treatment accuracy is improved, but interference with bracketed teeth movement occurs
Solution Approach 1:
The relief portion extracts or removes the interfering material from the aligner design in the specific region where the bracket is located. By creating this relief space, the aligner no longer interferes with the bracketed tooth movement while maintaining precise positioning control in other areas through the tooth-receiving cavity.
Data Source
AI summary
An orthodontic appliance including a shell aligner having a portion accommodating movement of a patient's bracketed teeth between a first position and the second position as elicited by force from an orthodontic braces appliance worn by the patient, related systems and methods.