A new metric for drill location for Navigated Control in navigated dental implantology

In this paper, a new metric for the evaluation of the drill location for navigation systems in dental implantology is presented. The influence of this metric on the precision of the navigation system is evaluated. For this evaluation, a highly accurate measurement method for the measurement of the drilled holes in phantom jaws is developed. The presented results are partial results of the project "Navigated Control in dental implantology". With Navigated Control, the power of handheld instruments, e.g., of a surgical drill, is adjusted depending on the deviation between actual location of the instrument and its desired location. The application of Navigated Control in dental implantology will lead to higher safety for the patient and the surgeon. The results are: (1) the described measurement method for the measurement of the drilled holes in phantom jaws is highly accurate and reproducible (the precision of the measurement method is higher than 0.04 mm and higher than 0.1degrees) and is suitable as a benchmark, (2) even the current simple implementation of Navigated Control will increase safety while keeping the high precision of up-to-date navigation systems, (3) the used new metric leads to higher comfort of Navigated Control in dental implantology. (C) 2004 Published by Elsevier B.V.