Usability, acceptance, and educational usefulness study of a new haptic operative dentistry virtual reality simulator.

BACKGROUND: Dental preclinical training has been traditionally centered onverbal instructions and subsequent execution on phantom heads and plastic training models. However, these present present limitations. Virtual Reality (VR) and haptic simulators have been proposed with promising results and advantages and have showed usefullness in the preclinical training environment. We designed DENTIFY, a multimodal immersive simulator to assist Operative Dentistry learning, which exposes the user to different virtual clinical scenarios while operating a haptic pen to simulate dental drilling. OBJECTIVE: The main objective is to assess DENTIFY's usability, acceptance, and educational usefulness to dentists, in order to make the proper changes and, subsequently, to test DENTIFY with undergraduate preclinical dental students. METHODS: DENTIFY combines an immersive head mounted VR display, a haptic pen in which the pen itself has been replaced by a 3D printed model of a dental turbine and a controller with buttons to adjust and select the scenario of the simulation, along with 3D sounds of real dental drilling. The user's dominant hand operated the virtual turbine on the VR-created scenario, while the non-dominant hand is used to activate the simulator and case selection. The simulation sessions occurred in a controlled virtual environment. We evaluated DENTIFY's usability and acceptance over the course of 13 training sessions with dental professionals, after the users performed a drilling task in virtual dental tissues. RESULTS: The conducted user acceptance indicates that DENTIFY shows potencial enhancing learning in operative dentistry as it promotes self-evaluation and multimodal immersion on the dental drilling experience. CONCLUSIONS: DENTIFY presented significant usability and acceptance from trained dentists. This tool showed to have teaching and learning (hence, pedagogical) potential in operative dentistry.

An immersive educational tool for dental implant placement: A study on user acceptance.

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.

Laparoscopy with augmented reality adaptations.

One of the most promising applications of Optical See-Through Augmented Reality is minimally laparoscopic surgery, which currently suffers from problems such as surgeon discomfort and fatigue caused by looking at a display positioned outside the surgeon's visual field, made worse by the length of the procedure. This fatigue is especially felt on the surgeon's neck, as it is strained from adopting unnatural postures in order to visualise the laparoscopic video feed. Throughout this paper, we will present work in Augmented Reality, as well as developments in surgery and Augmented Reality applied to both surgery in general and laparoscopy in particular to address these issues. We applied user and task analysis methods to learn about practices performed in the operating room by observing surgeons in their working environment in order to understand, in detail, how they performed their tasks and achieved their intended goals. Drawing on observations and analysis of video recordings of laparoscopic surgeries, we identified relevant constraints and design requirements. Besides proposals to approach the ergonomic issues, we present a design and implementation of a multimodal interface to enhance the laparoscopic procedure. Our method makes it more comfortable for surgeons by allowing them to keep the laparoscopic video in their viewing area regardless of neck posture. Also, our interface makes it possible to access patient imaging data without interrupting the operation. It also makes it possible to communicate with team members through a pointing reticle. We evaluated how surgeons perceived the implemented prototype, in terms of usefulness and usability, via a think-aloud protocol to conduct qualitative evaluation sessions which we describe in detail in this paper. In addition to checking the advantages of the prototype as compared to traditional laparoscopic settings, we also conducted a System Usability Scale questionnaire for measuring its usability, and a NASA Task Load Index questionnaire to rate perceived workload and to assess the prototype effectiveness. Our results show that surgeons consider that our prototype can improve surgeon-to-surgeon communication using head pose as a means of pointing. Also, surgeons believe that our approach can afford a more comfortable posture throughout the surgery and enhance hand-eye coordination, as physicians no longer need to twist their necks to look at screens placed outside the field of operation.