2020 Volume 36 Issue 2 Pages 71-80
Abstract Education for clinical techniques in dentistry faces difficulticulties such as factors concerning technical elements and the skills of handling various instruments properly, and the ideal educational method has not yet been established. This study aimed to solve the problem by measuring actual postures and motions by capturing the motion of the human body.
Seven male dentists and nine male 6th-year dental students in the Faculty of Dentistry, Niigata University participated in the study as the “dentist” group and “student” group, respectively. An optical motion capture system was applied to the participants to analyze their motions when preparing class I inlay cavities with an air turbine and diamond points.
The loci of the top of the diamond point were significantly different between the two groups and the preparation time of the dentist group was shorter than that of the student group. The dentist group did not move the wrist and elbow during preparation, and their head or chest kept a certain distance from the artificial teeth. During the practice, it appeared that the dentist group kept their upper bodies stable, whereas the students tended to control the air turbine only using the wrist and elbow while lowering their head.
The results revealed that this system can quantitatively analyze actual dental motions, including the positions of instruments and the upper body or trunk of the subjects.
It was also suggested that analysis by the system might be helpful to develop an objective method of assessing dental practice, although further investigation is needed.
