Gestalt driven augmented collimator widget for precise 5 dof dental drill tool positioning in 3d space

TL;DR

This paper introduces an Augmented Collimation Widget (ACW) that leverages gestalt principles to improve 5DOF dental drill positioning accuracy and usability, outperforming traditional methods in precision and user experience.

Contribution

The paper presents a novel ACW tool based on gestalt reification for enhanced 5DOF positioning, demonstrating significant improvements over the standard in accuracy and user satisfaction.

Findings

ACW improves positional accuracy by 19% and angular accuracy by 47%.

Users report less mental demand and frustration with ACW.

ACW is preferred aesthetically and functionally over the traditional standard.

Abstract

Drill tool positioning in dental implantology is a challenging task requiring 5DOF precision as the rotation around the tool axis is not influential. This work improves the quasi-static visual elements of the state-of-the-art with a novel Augmented Collimation Widget (ACW), an interactive tool of position and angle error visualization based on the gestalt reification, the human ability to group geometric elements. The user can seek in a quick, pre-attentive way the collimation of five (three positional and two rotational) error component widgets (ECWs), taking advantage of three key aspects: component separation and reification, error visual amplification, and dynamic hiding of the collimated components. We compared the ACW with the golden standard in a within-subjects (N=30) user test using 32 implant targets, measuring the time, error, and usability. ACW performed significantly better in positional (+19%) and angular (+47%) precision accuracy and with less mental demand (-6%) and frustration (-13%), but with an expected increase in task time (+59%) and physical demand (+64%). The interview indicated the ACW as the main preference and aesthetically more pleasant than GSW, candidating it as the new golden standard for implantology, but also for other applications where 5DOF positioning is key.