A Cephalometric educational tool with expert feedback

Cephalometric analysis involves the landmarking of several points which must be taken into consideration with great care since an error on only one point can have great impact on linear and angle measurements. For this reason we developed a software tool that allows student to practice in cephalometric landmarking. Their analysis can be saved and modified at a later time by the student or by the instructor. The student can also see the cephalometric analysis performed by the instructor, thus obtaining an immediate feedback that stimulates self-reflection. Finally the tool allows for CNN applications that highlight anatomical regions and landmarks and eases their detection. The tool was used in several situations with and without embossing and with different monitor size. The impact of the tool in the learning process is evaluated by analysis of the software log. Analysis of the application log revealed statistics about the time spent for the identification of each landmark, the improvements in landmarking performance are measured as a decrease in the time needed for the overall analysis or as distance from the gold standard computed as mean expert landmark coordinates. Finally, an analysis of a questionnaire administered to the users reveals an appreciation of the software tool that was considered very engaging.