The Use of Virtual Reality for Dental Anatomy Education

Objectives: Virtual Reality (VR) is becoming an essential part of modern education. In contemporary dental education, VR is being utilized in improving hand-eye coordination in preclinical settings as well as facilitating visualization of head and neck anatomy. This educational research survey looked to measure and compare the usefulness of VR learning to traditional modalities.
Methods: The current first year dental students (n=55) in the dental anatomy course experienced four lectures with distinct educational modalities on how to wax teeth. 1st lecture, students were shown a video on tooth waxing. 2nd lecture, students were given a short presentation with step-by-step instructions. 3rd lecture, students were given personalized tutoring as well as a live demo of the waxing procedure. 4th lecture, students have experienced VR of the waxing procedure on the HTC Vive through a software called VR Model Viewer. After the last lecture, educational research survey was used to collect data on usefulness of these different modalities of education.
Results: Figure 1 shows the average rating score of each teaching method along with the appropriate SD. Figure 2 shows the rating frequency for each of the teaching modality. One tailed T-tests (equal variance) were performed. P-value of evaluating the difference between "Waxing Video vs VR" shows 0.00002%. P-value of evaluating the difference between "Waxing Lectures vs VR" shows 0.004%. P-value of evaluating the difference between "Individual Waxing Instructions vs VR" shows 3.63E-18%. Null hypothesis tested was that there is no difference between the means in ratings. In all three scenarios, the T-test showed a rejection of the null hypothesis, indicating that there is a statiscally significant difference between the mean ratings of the teaching methods to VR.
Conclusions: Our pilot study did not show an overwhelming advantage to use VR in Dental Anatomy waxing exercise. There are resources, monetary and intellectual challenges involved with such training and educational institutions must evaluate carefully before any major investment. VR may be more suited for teaching of fine motor skills and hand eye coordination. We plan to repeat the study in Operative Dentistry and Fixed Prosthodontics course for comparison.