Dental Informatics: Improving dental research,practice and education

Dental informatics is the application of computer and information science to improve dental practice, research and program administration. Advances in the mainstream of education research, such as adaptive hypermedia, intelligent tutoring systems, simulations, and decision support systems for education will revolutionize dental education. A big improvement in the clinical applications is being brought about by various soft wares developed-like shape modeling and photogrammetry in orthodontics, virtual articulator and RaPiD in prosthodontics, Computer aided designing and machining for restorative dentistry, software like VisualDx in oral diagnosis, DICOM in radiology, behavior management in pedodontics and the list can go on. Teledentistry makes dental services available in remote areas and finally, development of nanodentistry will provide for the miraculous extension to dentistry, thereby striving to change the very face of dentistry! The book should help shed light on the interesting world of dental informatics and should be particularly helpful for dental students, teachers, researchers and practitioners and other professionals interested in information technology.