Sensable Technologies will showcase several touch-enabled medical simulation applications for surgical training at the South by Southwest (SXSW) conference in Austin, TX this week, the company announced.
The applications -- which include the Dental Nerve Block Injection Simulator from BioDigital -- all employ Sensable's Phantom haptic devices and OpenHaptics software toolkit, the company said.
The Dental Nerve Block Injection Simulator is a computer-based training tool designed to teach dental residents how to perform an inferior alveolar nerve (IAN) block. Developed in concert with Janice Lee, DDS, MD, and colleagues at the University of California, San Francisco School of Dentistry, the simulator comprises an animated training module demonstrating an IAN block injection, a virtual environment to practice the procedure using a haptics device, and an assessment module that tests the user's cognitive and skill-based abilities.
The simulator utilizes high-fidelity 3D models of the mouth, teeth, and relevant anatomy to give users the ability to explore craniofacial anatomy with realistic feedback, the developers said.
