Dynamic Modeling and Experimental Validation for Interactive Endodontic Simulation

To facilitate training of endodontic operations, we have developed an interactive virtual environment to simulate endodontic shaping operations. This paper presents methodologies for dynamic modeling, visual/haptic display and model validation of endodontic shaping. We first investigate the forces generated in the course of shaping operations and discuss the challenging issues in their modeling. Based on the special properties and constraints associated with both pulpal tissue and endodontic files, we propose a dynamic model to simulate endodontic shaping, which is a smoothed particle based model derived for the pulpal tissue coupled with a finite element model for the endodontic files. The virtual environment has been implemented with both graphic and haptic interfaces. Furthermore, the effectiveness of the proposed model has been validated by experimental results through a novel robotic endodontic measurement system.