A review of haptic simulator for oral and maxillofacial surgery based on virtual reality

ABSTRACT

Introduction: Traditional medical training in oral and maxillofacial surgery (OMFS) may be limited by its low efficiency and high price due to the shortage of cadaver resources. With the combination of visual rendering and feedback force, surgery simulators become increasingly popular in hospitals and medical schools as an alternative to the traditional training.

Areas covered: The major goal of this review is to provide a comprehensive reference source of current and future developments of haptic OMFS simulators based on virtual reality (VR) for relevant researchers.

Expert commentary: Visual rendering, haptic rendering, tissue deformation, and evaluation are key components of haptic surgery simulator based on VR. Compared with traditional medical training, virtual and tactical fusion of virtual environment in surgery simulator enables considerably vivid sensation, and the operators have more opportunities to practice surgical skills and receive objective evaluation as reference.

KEYWORDS:

• Oral and maxillofacial surgery
• surgery simulation
• visual rendering
• haptic rendering
• evaluation

Declaration of interest

The authors have no other relevant affiliations or financial involvement with any organization or entity with a financial interest in or financial conflict with the subject matter or materials discussed in the manuscript apart from those disclosed.

Reviewer disclosures

Peer reviewers on this manuscript have no relevant financial or other relationships to disclose.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by grants from National Key R&D Program of China (2017YFB1302903; 2017YFB1104100), the Foundation of Science and Technology Commission of Shanghai Municipality (15510722200; 16441908400), and Shanghai Jiao Tong University Foundation on Medical and Technological Joint Science Research (YG2016ZD01; YG2015MS26).