3D Medical Simulators Edit
PerioSim for Dental Students

Learning to be a dentist isn’t easy, but with the help of technological advances like the PerioSim 3D dental simulator, training becomes much more efficient for students.

Directly on the screen, students use a stylus which looks like an “explorer,” the scary-looking, pointy device dentists use to pick around your teeth during exams. Not only do they see the 3D virtual mouth in real time, but they also feel the dimensions of the mouth as if it were in an actual human’s.

PerioSim, which can be accessed online, was developed by researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Tools like this are much needed for these fields; going to the dentist is scary enough, but having dentists who don’t have sufficient training, whether in real life or virtual, is even more frightening.

Similar 3D simulators could be beneficial to students training in other medical professions too, from optometrists to plastic surgeons.