The building of an accurate 3D physical model of the skull and maxillary dentition.

3D rapid prototyping is a useful tool for the production of 3D models of the human skull taken from cone beam computed tomography scans. Although the accuracy of these models is acceptable the dentition is distorted. The aim of the study is to replace the inaccurately reproduced dental arch of a 3D printed skull model with accurate, correctly proportioned plaster teeth, obtained from a dental impression. 6 dried human skulls were scanned using a Faro laser arm scanner. Impressions of the dentition were taken using silicone impression material. Plaster dental casts were produced using dental stone. Following removal of the inaccurate dentition from the 3D printed skull model, the corresponding plaster dental cast was attached to the 3D printed skull model using a custom designed technique. The six modified 3D printed skull models with replaced dentition were laser scanned using a Faro arm. VRmesh software was used to superimpose the laser scanned skull images