Virtual Project a Reality

I want to provide a status report on the Virtual Reality (VR) project to teach techniques for local anesthesia. We have finally completed phase one, which is the development of a "proof of concept system" that allows for the manipulation of 3D objects in virtual space for the inferior alveolar (IA) injection only. Tatiana is our model demonstrating the system. She is wearing the head mounted display (HMD) as well as a tracker on her head and handling the sensor embedded syringe while she palpates our anatomical model. We had to simulate haptics with a real anatomical model covered in liquid rubber due to budget constraints.

This is a picture of the computer to show what the user sees in the virtual world. The 3D cranium has several layers of obfuscation to promote iterative learning of spatial and dimensional relationships of the anatomy. This is really cool to see demonstrated live!

Here is Bob reviewing the system. You can see our boxy "flock of birds" in the background, which is our electromagnetic human tracking system. Very swanky!

I am very pleased with our deliverables at this point! Yeah!