NYU COLLEGE OF DENTISTRY
How NYU College of Dentistry revolutionised traditional dental training using mixed reality technology
When the NYU College of Dentistry used mixed reality to revamp training for a complex, high-risk skill, other institutions soon followed. The new approach has helped to raise teaching standards for thousands of students and improved their performance in patient care.
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Screen capture of NYU's VR simulation system for local anaesthesia. Image credit: NYU College of Dentistry.
The challenge
Before dental students engage in patient care, they need to be knowledgeable and confident in their clinical skills. This is why conventional simulations in the physical world are essential in their early training.
One of the core oral surgery techniques every dentist must be proficient in is giving oral block anaesthetic injections. Skilled dentists can give this type of anaesthesia in just 60 seconds. It numbs a quarter of the face and lasts for as long as two hours, enabling dentists to carry out the procedures that they need to do in a clinical session.
However, the technique is difficult to learn, and students in most dental programmes in the US and the world practise by having dental students inject each other. This doesn't just involve some clinical risk for the participants – it's also highly stressful. Because of this, NYU Dentistry moved away from peer-to-peer injections years ago.
But the alternative was students using practice mannequins to hone their injection technique. Not only are these inert pieces of plastic unrealistic, they are also expensive and they lack the inner anatomy that students must be familiar with.
Because of these challenges, most dental students around the world get to practise local anaesthesia technique in a single session before performing it on a live patient. This is a fundamental problem that needed to be solved.
About the company
The NYU College of Dentistry is the largest dental school in the United States. The College has over 1,900 students in its various pre- and post-doctoral programmes. About 10% of practising dentists in the US graduate from this single dental school.
Industry
Cristian Opazo,
Director of Educational Technology,
NYU College of Dentistry
“
Our mixed reality system has proven to be more efficient than the alternatives, particularly because it enables a repeatable, realistic and low-stress experience, and because students can practise it at home and as many times as they like in a way that puts the learner in control of the experience.
Image credit: NYU University Relations and Public Affairs
WHY MR
Why Meta Horizon managed solutions?
The simulation system by NYU Dentistry was first developed for the Oculus Rift platform and has since been optimised to run on all Meta Quest headsets.
"The first time I needed to give anaesthesia to a patient as a third-year student, I felt I was ready", says Kaitlyn Re, DDS Class of 2025, NYU College of Dentistry. "After practising the VR simulation over and over with the Meta Quest headset, I felt like 'I have done this already, many times!'"
The College now has a fleet of 60 Meta Quest 2 headsets that students can take with them to practise at home at all hours of the day (and night). It also has ten Meta Quest Pros and recently acquired two units of the Meta Quest 3S.
The solution
In 2019, NYU Dentistry decided to replace mannequin-based preclinical training with an immersive, highly realistic VR-based simulation that provided rich real-time feedback.
NYU designed and developed its own oral surgery training system, and over two years, created and validated a simulation that allows dental students to train in local anaesthetic block technique, using Meta Quest headsets.
Set in an immersive model of a clinic, the simulation has two parts. The first involves the task of assembling a syringe. This is relatively simple, but it helps students get used to the hand controllers.
The second part involves delivering the anaesthetic block injection to a simulated adult patient in a dental chair. The student can see detailed layers of the patient's dental and facial anatomy. As they give the injection, they get real-time auditory, visual and haptic feedback, helping them with their technique in real time. And they can practise as many times as they feel they need to, doing so at home if they wish, until they are completely confident.
Student reaction to the training has been highly positive, and NYU Dentistry is now collaborating with external partners to integrate advanced haptics. This will involve students using a real syringe rather than hand controllers and being able to feel the sensations of the real-life technique, such as the texture of the tissues and bone. The College also hopes to create more mixed reality training in other dental anaesthesia techniques, as well as extractions and surgeries.
Dr Marci Levine,
Associate Clinical Professor of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery,
NYU College of Dentistry
“
The VR-based training has been very well received by the students and is a huge improvement from how they were trained in the past. They come back from the VR Lab experience saying: 'I can't wait to get into the patient clinics.'
The results
- The custom virtual simulation training by NYU Dentistry is now being licensed to other institutions for their dental education programmes' use.
- More than 1,200 dental students have been trained in individual mixed reality sessions since 2021, including 400 students per year for local anaesthesia training
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