A smoothed particle hydrodynamics algorithm for haptic rendering of dental filling materials

Using haptic interfaces to assist the training of skills in the curriculum of undergraduate dentists provides a unique opportunity to advance rendering algorithms and engineering of haptic devices. In this paper we use the dental context to explore a rendering technique called smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH) as a potential method to train the insertion of filling material into a previously prepared (virtual) dental cavity. The paper also considers how problems of haptic rendering might be implemented on a Graphical Processing Unit (GPU) that operates in the haptics control loop. The filling simulation used 3000 particles to represent the cavity boundary and filling material, running at an average of 447Hz. Novel smoothing function in SPH was developed and its flexibility is presented.