Measuring in virtual reality: a case study in dentistry

For application specialists to accept virtual reality (VR) as a valid new measuring environment, we conducted several case studies. This paper describes a case study in dentistry in which VR is used to measure the length of the root canal of a tooth from processed tomography data. This paper shows the advantages of measuring in visualization space rather than in reality. We present a software framework aimed at the application specialist rather than the VR expert. Furthermore, the VR measuring technique is analyzed and compared to traditional measuring techniques for this particular application. We show that VR allows for intuitive measuring paradigms that are accurate and versatile alternatives to situations where traditional techniques are deficient.