Cavity Crusher

Educational platform for training dentists & hygienists.

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Inspiration

We have friends who are pursuing careers in the dental industry and wanted to make a means for them to practice basic procedures on their own time, without the need for a live subject or expensive anatomical dummy.

What it does

Cavity Crusher VR simulates a variety of dental operations including plaque removal and tooth scraping, flossing, x-raying, and cavity filling. Upon first entering the environment, the user is shown a tutorial that covers the aforementioned procedures with accompanying graphics and descriptions of how to use it. There are multiple dental tools stationed in a tray which will only remove certain elements depending on the tool used, which demonstrates the importance of using the right tool to clean certain parts of the mouth.

How we built it

We used Github, Blender, and Unity to create this project. We used GitHub as a version control system to always maintain a working version of the project and allows us to track our progress throughout the duration of the hackathon. To obtain 3D models, we gathered open source models and used Blender to modify them for our purposes. We used Unity to merge the assets we created in Blender in an environment where we could create an immersive environment that would help train people who were interested in the field of dentistry.

Challenges we ran into

We struggled to apply individual hitboxes to the teeth as they were all bound together as one object source file. We got through this though, and used Blender to separate them into separate objects. Another challenge we faced was scripting so many interactions through Unity, especially since most of our members were first time Unity users.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are proud of our capabilities to combine the models into making an interactive environment that teaches people the basics of how a regular teeth cleaning routine looks like. During the span of 20+ hours, we learned the basics of Unity, from using materials to texture an object, to using triggers in a C# script in order to develop a project that comprehensively covers all potential procedures expected of a regular dental procedure.

What's next for Cavity Crusher

The future of Cavity Crusher includes expanding the suite of simulated operations to include placing crowns, root canals, tooth extraction and more. Continuing to improve the quality of existing operations is also a future goal. An example of this would be making plaque scraping more realistic, with a texture that we slowly can scrape clean.

Built with:

Blender, Unity, C#, Github

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