Establishing Evaluation Criteria for Digital Dental Simulation Systems and the Differences between Software and Evaluators

Purpose: Cavity and tooth preparation are essential curriculum components in dental education for undergraduate students, and faculty staff determine whether the standard of the work is acceptable. However, evaluators are inevitably subject to variability and bias, so quantification of the evaluation is desirable. Therefore, various digital devices have been developed to quantify evaluations, such as SURFLACER, Simodont, and DentSim. In this study, we aimed to investigate the use of evaluation software and to compare human evaluation with software evaluation using a new digital dental education device with a real- time evaluation function. Material and Method: Dental students prepared a full metal crown on an artificial mandibular left first molar, which was evaluated by the software and a human evaluator (a dentist). Results: The results showed that the software evaluation was more suitable with eight cross-sections than with four cross- sections. The dentist evaluated the same teeth according to a set of evaluation criteria, but there were no statistically significant differences in any of the evaluation items. Finally, multivariate analysis was conducted to assess the relationship between the software evaluation using eight cross-sections and the human evaluator using dummy variables, and it revealed that the margin form evaluation by the dentist was a significant explanatory variable for the score by the software. Conclusion: This preliminary study is the first to demonstrate that the new digital dental education device has considerable potential as a digital educational tool.