Toward Intelligent Tutorial Feedback in Surgical Simulation: Robust Outcome Scoring for Endodontic Surgery

Numerous VR simulators have been developed as a means of addressing limitations of the traditional apprenticeship approach to dental surgical skill training. Most existing simulators support intra-and extra-coronal procedures such as carries removal. In this paper we address the problem of automated outcome assessment for endodontic surgery. Outcome assessment is an essential component of any system that provides formative feedback, which requires assessing the outcome, relating it to the procedure, and communicating in a language natural to dental students. This paper takes a first step toward automated generation of such comprehensive feedback. Our system automatically computes reference templates based on tooth anatomy, which provides flexibility to adjust parameters such as tolerance and to create new templates on demand. Detailed scores are transformed into the standard scoring language used by dental schools. Preliminary evaluation of our system on fifteen outcome samples with three expert endodontists shows a high degree of agreement with expert scores.