Project

VR Dental Simulator

A virtual-reality simulator with haptic force feedback that trains dental students' psychomotor skills before they ever touch a real patient.

In-game view of the VR dental simulator in stereoscopic 3D

01Overview

Preclinical dental education relies on plastic teeth, which offer little tactile realism and no opportunity to practice endodontic procedures in three dimensions. My simulator replaces those teeth with a virtual patient in a head-mounted display: students drill on virtual teeth while feeling realistic cutting forces through haptic devices, and they can navigate inside the tooth that would be invisible to the naked eye.

Behind the scenes are custom algorithms for collision detection, material removal, and real-time visualization — the parts that make a simulator feel like surgery. The material model continuously cuts virtual tooth tissue at haptic rates, and depth perception is supported by true 3D stereopsis and careful alignment of the physical hand with the virtual tool.

Part of the CGVR research program at the University of Bremen: project page at Uni Bremen →

02Videos

Simulator features during root-canal access opening on tooth #26, with eye tracking.

Mirror guidance feedback: visual, verbal, and haptic guidance methods.

03How it works

A simulator has to fool two senses at once — your eyes and your hands. That requires three subsystems running at very different rates:

1 kHz

Collision detection

Haptic rendering needs fresh forces every millisecond, otherwise the feedback goes unstable.

continuous

Material removal

A cutting model removes virtual tooth tissue as the drill moves, with force coupled to hardness.

90 Hz

Visual rendering

Stereoscopic 3D plus hand–tool alignment keeps depth perception honest in the headset.

Tooth model with three layers: enamel, dentin, pulp

Teeth with three layers

Every tooth models enamel, dentin, and pulp separately, so the drill feels the change of material as it cuts deeper.

Physical setup with two haptic devices

Two hands, two haptic devices

The mirror is controlled by the left hand, the drill hand-piece by the right — just like the real procedure.

Top view of an acceptable drilling outcome

Objective feedback

The system scores drilling outcomes against expert-approved shapes — the basis for the RCT showing real skill transfer.

04Gallery

The physical device setup while the simulator is in use — The physical device setup while the simulator is in use.

A dental student using the simulator as part of a user study — 40 dental students were trained; error rates dropped based on evaluation by two independent expert dentists.

The in-game view rendered in stereoscopic 3D — The in-game view, rendered in stereoscopic 3D inside a VR headset.

Tooth #36 with enamel, dentin, and pulp layers — Tooth #36 (first mandibular molar) with all three tissue layers.

Tooth #16 model mesh — The tooth #16 model mesh (first maxillary molar).

Dentin shape extruding towards the cusps — The dentin shape extrudes towards the cusps of the crown.

Top view of an acceptable drilling outcome — Top view of an acceptable drilling outcome.

An overdrilled drilling outcome — An overdrilled drilling outcome — detected automatically.

05Key Results

A randomized controlled trial with 83 dental students showed that training on the simulator significantly improves real-world clinical skills (BMC Medical Education, 2025).
3D stereopsis and hand–tool alignment significantly improve learning effectiveness and skill transfer to real phantom heads (PLOS ONE, 2023).
Continuous material cutting with haptic feedback runs at interactive rates on consumer VR hardware (IEEE VR, 2019).

06Related Research