Virtual Dentistry based on Augmented Reality 

Ever wondered how technology would help you to change the way you plan a treatment or the way you practice dentistry? Well, the future of dentistry is surely going to be fascinating, fast and above all will have no room for error! Thanks to technology, dentistry won’t be the same and will give the clinician an opportunity to have a clear idea about the procedure.  

Expodent International 2019, India’s largest dental exhibition had several dental brands that showcased overwhelming technological products ranging from state-of-the-art Microscopes offering Illumination even at 25x magnification to Scanners that can scan a full mouth in less than a minute. There were many other technologically sound products too.

The Morita Group, one of the most well-known manufacturers of medical-technical products in the world, had an interesting product on display during the dental exhibition. They presented a product for virtual dentistry based on Augmented reality. A product that will help you to get an idea on how the future of dentistry looks like. Augmented reality is an interactive experience of a real-world environment where the objects that reside in the real world are enhanced by computer-generated perceptual information.

What is the product? What’s the speciality of the product?

This product consists of a glass supported by Virtual Reality that could help the doctor analyse the complete procedure before even operating the patient and at the same time giving the patient an insight to what kind of treatment they will be undergoing.

The Glass gives the dentist an idea of all the essential information he/she would need without even examining the patient. This takes place after the combination of a few modalities such as CBCT, Intra Oral, IOPA images taken in the digital format. Now, after the combination of the images from the above modalities, the Glass would give the dentist an idea of the quality of bone, oral defects, cancerous tissue, periodontal diseases any other oral issue that needs to be considered. This information will help the dentist to have a look inside the patient’s mouth without even opening the patient’s mouth to check for any cavities or before proceeding with a surgical procedure.

Let’s understand the product with the help of example. Consider a Patient who has a missing tooth/ tooth and wishes to get a Dental Implant treatment done.

The Glass would do the following:

THE DENTIST: –
1. Gets an idea on the type of bone and the availability of the bone
2. Gets an idea on the type of Implant and the size of implant which has to be loaded
3. Gets an idea of the actual surgery with the help of Virtual Surgery

THE PATIENT: –
1. Gets a sneak peek into the complete procedure.
2. Gets an idea how the post-operative results would be