A method for intraoral imaging obtains a digital image of one or more teeth and detects first and second boundaries. At each of the first and second boundaries, there is calculated a boundary ratio of mean gray-scale values for the tooth area on one side of the boundary to mean gray-scale values for background areas on the other side. The calculated boundary ratios are stored. A third ratio of the mean gray-scale values for the tooth area near the first boundary to the mean gray-scale values for the tooth area near the second boundary is calculated and stored. A vector is formed and stored that contains at least the calculated boundary ratios and the third ratio. The tooth surface is classified as either smooth or occlusal according to the stored vector. The image data is processed according to the classification and processing results are reported.
