Tags:dental education, tooth drilling simulator, virtual reality simulator and VR-scene for dentist office
Abstract:
The technologies of the augmented and virtual reality have a special role in medical education as an additional tool for training professional skills in pre-clinical practice. In the paper, we describe the development of a virtual reality simulator with immersion in VR-scene for dentist office and simulation of tooth drilling. Such kinds of simulators would contribute to evolving capacities of motor skills and hand-eye coordination. The VR simulator for dental students training is developed for Oculus Quest 2 VR headset with six degrees of freedom. The Marching Cubes algorithm is chosen as an optimal decision for autonomous VR headsets, the computational power of which is much lower than PCs. The main stages of the development of tooth drilling simulation are considered. They include voxalization, marching cubes algorithm, collision detection, and detection of penetration depth of the dental drill. The experience of VR-scene using for dental students training has been piloted at the Faculty of Dentistry at the V. I. Vernadsky Crimean Federal University. To evaluate the pilot study we used a satisfaction questionnaire, which evaluated the realism of tooth 3D-model drilling and the realism of VR-scene for the creation of a dentist’s office atmosphere.
The Virtual Reality Simulator Development for Dental Students Training: a Pilot Study