An integrated surgical planning and virtual training system using a force feedback haptic device for dental implant surgery

The application of dental implants proposes a successful treatment both partially and fully edentulous patients. However, the placement of implants is not without risk due to anatomically complex operation sites in the cranio-maxillofacial region. Therefore, in the field of oral implantology, there is a trend towards computer-aided implant surgery. In this study, an integrated surgical planning and virtual training system is presented. With the introduction of DLL (Dynamic Link Libraries) and some well-known free, open source software libraries such as VTK, ITK, and QT, a modular software named CAPPOIS (Computer Assisted Preoperative Planning for Oral Implant Surgery) was developed for preoperative planning, including medical image importing, image segmentation and 3D-Reconstruction, 2D/3D geometrical measurements, optimization design of the position and orientation of oral implants, etc. Then, the following virtual surgical training system is developed based on the force feedback haptic device, i.e., Omega.3, and the software toolkit of CHAI3D. With the use of this system, the resulting data of the preoperative planning can be transferred, and surgical simulation of the plan can be vividly realized. In this way, the surgeon can grasp the feel of osteotomy procedure, gain experience and therefore improve his skills during the actual dental implant surgery. This pilot study proves helpful for the inexperienced surgeons; however, more clinical cases will be conducted to demonstrate its feasibility and reliability.