Photo-Guided Tooth Segmentation on 3D Oral Scan Model

Accurate 3D tooth segmentation is fundamental for digital dentistry, orthodontic analysis, and clinical simulation. Intraoral scan (IOS) models often suffer from incomplete or unreliable texture information, making it difficult to delineate fine boundaries between teeth and gingiva, while 2D intraoral images provide rich semantic and chromatic information that can complement 3D geometry. Thus, we propose a novel Photo-guided 3D Model Tooth Segmentation framework, PMTSeg, that enhances 3D tooth segmentation by integrating texture cues from intraoral photos. Our framework introduces three key components: a Camera Alignment Module (CAM) for accurate image-model registration, a Feature Filtering Gate (FFG) for adaptive multi-view feature selection, and a Consistent Feature Learning (CFL) mechanism for learning texture-geometry correspondence. Our method supports arbitrary numbers and views of intraoral photos. Experiments show significant improvements in distinguishing adjacent teeth and tooth–gingiva boundaries, demonstrating that intraoral photographs serve as an efficient, semantically rich supplement to 3D scans for precise dental segmentation.