Background

Tools for training and education of dental students can improve their ability to perform technical procedures such as dental implant placement. Shortage of training can negatively affect dental implantologists’ performance during intraoperative procedures, resulting in lack of surgical precision and, consequently, inadequate implant placement, which may lead to unsuccessful implant supported restorations or other complications.

Objective

We designed and developed IMMPLANT a virtual reality educational tool to assist implant placement learning, which allows users to freely manipulate 3D dental models (e.g., a simulated patient's mandible and implant) with their dominant hand while operating a touchscreen device to assist 3D manipulation.

Methods

The proposed virtual reality tool combines an immersive head-mounted display, a small hand tracking device and a smartphone that are all connected to a laptop. The operator's dominant hand is tracked to quickly and coarsely manipulate either the 3D dental model or the virtual implant, while the non-dominant hand holds a smartphone converted into a controller to assist button activation and a greater input precision for 3D implant positioning and inclination. We evaluated IMMPLANT's usability and acceptance during training sessions with 16 dental professionals.

Results

The conducted user acceptance study revealed that IMMPLANT constitutes a versatile, portable, and complementary tool to assist implant placement learning, as it promotes immersive visualization and spatial manipulation of 3D dental anatomy.

Conclusions

IMMPLANT is a promising virtual reality tool to assist student learning and 3D dental visualization for implant placement education. IMMPLANT may also be easily incorporated into training programs for dental students.

中文翻译：

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沉浸式牙科植入物教育工具：用户接受度研究

背景

牙科学生的培训和教育工具可以提高他们执行诸如种植牙的技术程序的能力。培训不足会在手术过程中对牙种植医师的表现产生负面影响，从而导致手术精度下降，进而导致植入物放置不充分，从而可能导致植入物支持的修复失败或其他并发症。

目的

我们设计并开发了IMMPLANT虚拟现实教育工具，以协助进行植入物放置学习，该工具允许用户在控制触摸屏设备以协助3D操作的同时，用惯用的手自由地操作3D牙科模型（例如，模拟患者的下颌骨和植入物）。

方法

拟议中的虚拟现实工具结合了沉浸式头戴式显示器，小型手部追踪设备和智能手机，这些设备均连接到笔记本电脑。跟踪操作员的惯用手可以快速粗略地操作3D牙齿模型或虚拟植入物，而惯用手则将智能手机转换为控制器，以辅助按钮激活，并为3D植入物的定位和倾斜提供更高的输入精度。在与16位牙科专家进行的培训期间，我们评估了IMMPLANT的可用性和接受性。

结果

进行的用户接受度研究表明，IMMPLANT构成了一种多功能，便携式和互补的工具，可帮助进行植入物放置学习，因为它可以促进沉浸式可视化和3D牙齿解剖结构的空间操作。

结论

IMMPLANT是一种有前途的虚拟现实工具，可协助学生学习和3D牙齿可视化，用于种植体植入教育。IMMPLANT也可以很容易地纳入牙科学生的培训计划中。