Behind Development Story #1
Hello, dental students and professionals around the world using the DentalMaster app!
I'm Grayson, the CTO of Dental-Edutec, and I'm responsible for service planning and development.
Today, I’d like to share some fun and lighthearted stories behind the creation and development of DentalMirrorMaster and DentalEndoMaster. If you’ve found Dr. Jongki’s topics a bit heavy, don't worry—this one will be a breeze.
Most of you using the DentalMaster series are dental students, likely in your early twenties. So, let me start with a question:
"When DentalMirrorMaster was in its concept stage, which game genre did we refer to for inspiration? What type of game comes to mind?"
If you answered this question immediately, you’re not just a great dentist but an excellent gamer, too!
The answer is FPS (First Person Shooting) games.
The Beginning of the Project
Dental MirrorMaster was inspired by the dual-hand control system of FPS games, where one hand aims the gun and the other moves the character. A few years ago, Dr. Jongki approached me with a simple idea: he wanted an app to help practice treatment while looking in a mirror, as even after decades of training, it was still challenging for him. He showed me a reflection of the letter 'A' and asked if I could create an app where users could trace it. The initial idea was simple: show the mirrored 'A' on the screen and let users trace it with their hands.
However, I wanted to take it further and incorporate more realistic scenarios. This led me to the FPS game control system. We started with a virtual mirror in a 3D environment, displaying real-time reflections and allowing real-time control of the mirror and handpiece. This was the foundation of Dental MirrorMaster as you know it today.
Fast forward a few years, and Dental MirrorMaster has become a global standard app, helping over 60,000 dental students train their clinical skills worldwide. It’s incredibly rewarding to see how far we’ve come.
Challenges to Overcome #0
Start with Unity Game Engine
The Dental Master App was developed using one of the most renowned game development platforms, the Unity Game Engine
Game tech is an excellent platform for creating medical simulations, but it doesn’t come without its challenges.
Challenges to Overcome #1
Massive Tooth Mesh vs GPU
Processing the large volume of real-time dental scanning data was quite a hurdle. While games typically handle even more mesh and texture data efficiently, the process of reading vertex data, applying prep algorithms, updating, and sending it back to the GPU in real-time is highly inefficient for the GPU. Consequently, achieving the smooth simulation we have now wasn't easy from the start. We implemented additional mesh processing steps to prevent lag during the prep simulation and spent a lot of time optimizing the prep algorithms.
Challenges to Overcome #2
Hand Control System vs Eyes and Brain
However, the most time-consuming aspect was perfecting the control mechanism of the handpiece. There’s a difference between the spatial perception in our minds and what our eyes actually see. Although you’re looking at a 2D smartphone screen, your brain reconstructs it into a 3D space. Touching and moving the screen is a 2D action, but thanks to our brain's unique capabilities, it translates into an effective virtual training experience. This is why MirrorMaster can be so effective despite being on a limited device like a smartphone.
Returning to the development story, because our brains interpret the act of touching the phone screen differently from the actual spatial movement of the tooth, it felt very awkward when we matched the screen's up-down movements directly with the spatial up-down movements. To address this, we adjusted the control direction on the screen to differ from the actual movement direction in space. Dr. Jongki and I conducted countless playthroughs to find the optimal settings.
You can see the crosshair coordinates on the right bottom side of the touch screen are slightly tilted. This is adjusted according to the position of the tooth being treated. Although the differences are subtle and may not be noticeable, we found a crucial solution to bridge the gap between hand movements and brain perception in the actual play environment.
Challenges to Overcome #3
Anytime, Anywhere vs VR (Virtual Reality)
At DentalEduTech, our first principle for tech application is “Anytime, Anywhere.” The second principle is the use of appropriate technology.
However, this “Anytime, Anywhere” principle wasn’t clear from the start. In the early stages of introducing DentalMirrorMaster to schools and professionals, we frequently heard feedback like, “It would be great if this was made in VR,” or “Why didn’t you make it in VR?” We were aware that virtual dental training systems were being developed using high-end haptic machines and VR, and we knew how appealing these technologies were. In comparison, the concept of “performing dental procedures on a smartphone” wasn’t very attractive. That is, until it became a “must-have app” for over 60,000 dental students worldwide.
The choice we made was based on the belief that the most important aspect of skills training with technology is the ability to train anytime, anywhere. We believed that if a technology couldn’t break free from the spatial and temporal constraints of traditional practice labs, it might be impressive and attractive, but it wouldn’t be truly helpful. This belief was solidified about a year after the service launch, thanks to reviews from actual users and messages on our discord channel and appstore
Of course, while adhering to the “Anytime, Anywhere” principle, we are conducting various tech experiments to take it a step further. One notable example is our experiments with AR and computer vision (artificial intelligence). We expect that it will be possible to implement a more realistic 3D space using just a smartphone. However, we plan to reveal these technologies only when we believe they are not just attention-grabbing shows, but truly practical and beneficial to our users.
Looking Ahead
The intersection of dental fields and game technology is an exciting and experimental challenge. The second series, EndoMaster, was a project that involved establishing the software architecture standard for the Dental Master series and conducting in-depth research on the geometric analysis of oral structures. Next time, I’ll share some behind-the-scenes stories of EndoMaster’s development.
Moreover, there are many more fascinating tech stories to come, such as our research on implementing AR (Augmented Reality) to create a virtual simulation environment similar to the real world in an "Anytime, Anywhere Practice" and the development of the Standard Dental Simulation Platform to further expand the Dental Master series. We’ll bring you the behind-the-scenes stories of our development and insights into the future technologies we are working on.
See you next time
Grayson
