Virtual Dental Sculpting Simulator » Introduction:

This is a surface-based virtual dental sculpting simulator based on auditory, visual, and tactile realities. The simulator can be used to perform different dental procedures (i.e., grinding, drilling, or surface scrubbing), and gain experience of using various virtual dental tools of different shapes. It makes the dentists feel safer when entering to perform the real operation task on the real patient.

The system consists of various sections such as

Model Reduction

Mesh Refinement

Collision detection

Local-based subdivision of triangles

Local model updating

Force feedback

Visual and sounder rendering

Why? It is believed that during dental surgery procedures, a dentist must learn to operate dental instruments very precisely and develop a realistic sense of touch for the interaction of dental instrument with patient anatomy.

Virtual Dental Sculpting Simulator » Features:

Model reduction can be performed for higher update rate.

Various triangular subdivision algorithms can be performed such as Loop, Sqrt(3), Butterfly, 9-Split, 4-Split, 3-Split, and Bi-tri.

Different kinds of dental tools (i.e., Spherical Excavator, Spherical Drilling Cutter, Cylindrical Cutter, and Cone Cutter) can be used for material removal operation.

All dental tools are surface-based modeled with good visual quality.

Collision detection algorithm is implemented using oriented bounding box (OBB).

Local-based triangle subdivision is performed.

Enhanced force filtering algorithm is used for tactile feelings.

Better visual quality

Realistic cutting sound

The simulation of material removal can be carried out on any scanned model from a commercial 3D dental scanner.

Virtual Dental Sculpting Simulator » Concept Animation:

This animation shows the concept of drilling operation with a haptic device. When a user moves the dental tool along with the stylus of the haptic device, vertices or mesh of the 3D model deforms at the spherical tool's surface. After deformation of vertices, the cutting section of the tooth can be visualized.

In order to play this animation, move your mouse cursor on the small arrow button of the haptic stylus, the button will change its colour to green, then press it.

Virtual Dental Sculpting Simulator » Videos:

This video presents a surface-based virtual dental sculpting simulator based on mixed auditory, visual, and tactile realities. The simulator can be used to perform different dental procedures (i.e., grinding, drilling, or scrubbing). Phantom Omni is used as a haptic device which offers three degree-of-freedom output and six degree-of-freedom positional sensing capabilities.

Download:

Latest version is 1.0.5 released on 2012.06.02.