Application of virtual reality technology in oral and maxillofacial anatomy and three-dimensional digital model construction / 中国组织工程研究

ABSTRACT

BACKGROUND:With the rapid development of medical technology, computer image technology and the urgent needs of computer-aided clinical teaching, the application of virtual reality technology in oral and maxilofacial anatomy has become an issue of concern. OBJECTIVE:To summarize the application of virtual reality technology in oral and maxilofacial anatomy, thereby providing the better methods for clinical and basic research of oral medicine, laying the foundation for building the digital repository, and realizing the informatization and networking construction. METHODS:A computer-based retrieval was performed by the first author in the CNKI and PubMed databases to search papers related on the virtual reality technology applied in oral and maxilofacial anatomy published between January 2004 and December 2014, using the key words of “tissue engineering, virtual reality, oral and maxilofacial anatomy, digital, 3D reconstruction, multimedia, teeth, skul” in Chinese and English, respectively. According to inclusion and exclusion criteria, 52 papers were included in the final analysis. RESULTS AND CONCLUSION:The application of virtual reality technology in oral and maxilofacial anatomy mainly includes 3D digital model and virtual digital database of human body. 3D medical reconstruction software includes 3D-Doctor and Minics that support the original data sources including continuous fault anatomical images, varieties of image data and 3D scanning data. A variety of virtual reality technologies can successfuly reproduce the tooth, dentition and oral and maxilofacial anatomy, laying the foundation for building the virtual reality platform in oral clinical application and teaching.