Improvement of Mesh Free Deforming Analysis for Maxillofacial Palpation on a Virtual Training System

Palpation is important medical diagnostic technic to make correct diagnosis of symptomatic state. It requires a lot of palpation experience under leadership of an experienced medical doctor. Hence, a palpation training system with virtual model of an affected part is useful to get better at the skill. However, there is no practical training for maxillofacial palpation in the dental education curriculum in Japan. So, it is necessary for dental students that the virtual training system is developed, which can to practice maxillofacial palpation. Then, a trial palpation training system for maxillofacial disorder is developed by using virtual reality model and haptic interface. The system is consisted of a PC and the haptic device - PHANToM Omni. A virtual affected part model is constructed from multi-CT images through commercial software. In particular, the dynamic responding virtual model and real-time analysis method through simplified mesh free method are improved. Consequently, we succeed in operation at the real-time by the palpation training system.