蜜桃传媒

Not that long ago, a dentist would fill a patient’s mouth with a goopy mixture of alginate or silicone to create a mold for implants, crowns or braces. It was messy, time-consuming and not always 100% precise.

Today, thanks to advances in digital dentistry, such practices have largely been replaced by scans, which are less invasive. Cone beam computed tomography (CBCT), for instance, allows dentists to gather a comprehensive baseline record and virtually plan a variety of dental treatments.

This is one of a host of digital dentistry technology that students are learning at the School of Dental Medicine.

“Many dentists are using digital technology in their workflow and labs are relying on it, too, says Joseph DeLuca, clinical associate professor of restorative dentistry who directs the dental school’s Pre-Clinical Simulation Laboratory and practices dentistry locally. “If you’re not using it in some way, you’re falling behind.”

UB dental students are far from falling behind. Starting as early as their first year, they’re immersed in a range of digital and artificial intelligence (AI) concepts, primarily through two courses: Introduction to Digital Dentistry and Clinical Dentistry II.

 In Clinical Dentistry II, DeLuca teaches students how to take clinical impressions, both analog and digital, as well as how to master various dental injections. During students’ third-year rotation, they plan implant surgical guides using a CBCT and digital scan, which ensure that surgeries go exactly as planned.

“All students are being trained in the preclinical facility,” DeLuca says. “They learn how to use these digital technologies to create a crown, a denture, an implant surgical guide or the implant crown itself.”

DeLuca also teaches Introduction to Digital Dentistry, with other sections taught by Department of Periodontics and Endodontics colleagues Lucila Piasecki, clinical associate professor, and Mohini Ratakonda, clinical assistant professor.

In this course, first- and second-year students use AI and try their hand at 3D mapping to plan procedures like implants and root canals.

“The internal anatomy of teeth is highly complex, and understanding its structure and variations is crucial for the success of many dental procedures, including fillings, post placements and root canal treatments,” says Piasecki, who teaches the course with Ratakonda. “Virtual models allow students to grasp the concepts more effectively than standards X-rays or images in textbooks.”

Piasecki started her foray into digital dentistry in 2018 with a free application that allowed students to manipulate virtual models of real teeth using smartphones or tablets. Last year, she invested in a new paid version that allows users to visualize and manipulate virtual models with augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR).

Piasecki wanted to share the technology with her students, so she tapped Cynthia Tysick, the UB librarian for innovative pedagogy and creative spaces. Tysick helped Piasecki create her pilot project, “Multi-Dimensional Learning: Using 3D-Printing, Augmented Reality, and Virtual Reality to Teach Dental Anatomy in Endodontics.”

Tysick was able to provide the dental school with several of the library’s Meta Quest 3 headsets (VR googles), allowing students to have an immersive experience to visualize and interact with the tooth models.

For the pilot, Piasecki and Ratakonda presented a lecture, then showed students the same 3D models of teeth as printed prototypes using an AR application, and finally, had them try out the VR goggles. At the end, they asked students what they liked best — or didn’t like ­­— about each method.

The main difference is the level of immersion. While the VR goggles create a digital environment that replaces the real world, the AR overlays the models onto the real world.

“It’s like when you are shopping online for furniture and the applications allow you to visualize how the pieces would look in your living room,” Piasecki explains. “The AR allows the students to interact with the models using only phones or tablets without the need for other equipment.”

Students reported the AR and VR experiences as highly engaging, saying they helped them understand dental anatomy better and made them more excited to learn. Some students noted the 3D-printed models offered a valuable tactile component.

“The generation that grew up playing interactive video games wants to go beyond PowerPoint presentations and experience learning in three dimensions,” Ratakonda notes. “If we keep teaching them with the old methods, they don’t get it.”

Two of the top reasons dental professionals are embracing digital dentistry are cost and time savings. While some of the digital scanners run into tens of thousands of dollars on the front end, dentists will save money in the long run, DeLuca says.

“You’re no longer buying materials to take impressions, which are really expensive. You’re saving on the lab work as well,” he says. “You can just send the digital file to the lab or you can mill it yourself in-house, which also saves time. When I mill my crowns in my office, I prepare the scans, design the tooth and cement it all in a two-hour window. A patient shows up to the appointment and leaves two hours later with the final crown. And the placement is more precise.”

While 10 years ago, digital dentistry was not more accurate than its analog counterpart, that isn’t the case today, DeLuca says, adding, “Another reason a lot more dentists and dental faculty have started to embrace digital dentistry is that it’s now outpacing the traditional workflow as far as accuracy goes.”

DeLuca says he and his colleagues are trying to introduce students slowly to emerging technologies, rather than unveiling everything all at once.

“We give them baby steps,” he says. “By the time they graduate, they’ll know what technology is available and how to use it. And when they have their own practice, they can decide if they want to invest in the equipment.”

At the same time, DeLuca insists his students also learn hands-on, analog methods, which not all restorative dental programs require.

“I tell my students, ‘Yes, AI and digital programs streamline a lot of the lab work. But if they are streamlined wrong, we as clinicians need to be able recognize the errors,’” he says. “If you’re expecting the computer to do your work for you, you’re going to get bad results. So, understanding those fundamentals is still really important.”