In this age of advanced and complicated clinical dentistry, knowledge acquisition through books and training methods using mannikins cannot provide adequate training results. With Virtual Reality (VR) system, our approach is to develop a "therapeutic simulator" whereby the skill of remedy of expert dentists can be inherited intuitively by dental trainees. The digitizer has 7 links with 7 degrees of freedom like the human arm, and an electric rotary encoder was set to evaluate the movement of the handpiece with accuracy better than 0.5mm. The application of virtual reality provides the advantages of 1) supplementing intermediate and mannikin-based training in the process of practical education, 2) enables training in abnormal cases as when the patient's tongue moves suddenly, and 3) enables three-dimensional recording of the process of tooth cutting, which can be played back later for review. This study was supported by the Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research from the Ministry of Education, Science and Culture in Japan (No. (A) (1) 05507004).
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