Life-like teeth to help dental students

La Trobe University’s physicists, electronic engineers and oral health staff joined forces with industry to create large life-like teeth that will help dentistry and oral health students at the Bendigo campus understand the tissue structure and anatomy of teeth in a new interactive way.

Unlike other models which show tooth surfaces as smooth, the large life-like teeth were created to realistically show grooves and fault lines which are often hard to see with the naked eye.

The project was carried out with the  Supertooth NDK company.

Dentistry and Oral Health lecturer Colleen McCarthy says that the life-like teeth will be used as learning and teaching resources in Oral Health at Bendigo, enabling students to be aware of what pits and fissure look like as they are difficult to see on real teeth.