Preliminary evaluation of a virtual reality dental simulation system on drilling operation.

To evaluate the fidelity of the iDental system and investigate its utility and performance on simulated drilling operations, user studies consisting of objective and subjective evaluations were performed. A voxel-based drilling simulation sub-system in the iDental system was employed for evaluation. Twenty participants were enrolled to take part in the experiments and were divided into two groups: novice and resident. A combined evaluation method including objective and subjective methods was employed. The objective evaluation included two dental drilling tasks: caries removal operation and pulp chamber opening operation. In the subjective method, participants were required to complete a questionnaire to evaluate the fidelity of the system after the operation task. Based on the structured global assessment scales in the questionnaire, the average subjective evaluation scores of the proposed metrics were greater than 4.5, demonstrating that the system operated above medium fidelity. Dentists expressed great interest and positive attitudes toward the potential of the iDental system. The objective evaluation data including time spent and the volume of removed healthy and carious tissue were obtained. Although no significant differences could be found between the two groups, the volume of removed caries and the depth of pulp chamber insertion manifested small standard deviations. Evaluation results illustrated that dentists were willing to use the virtual reality training system. Several future research topics were identified, including increasing the task difficulty, improving the system fidelity and introducing appropriate finger rest points.