Application of task-autonomous dental robot for lateral window preparation in the maxillary sinus

The study aimed to investigate the feasibility and accuracy of task-autonomous dental robots for lateral window preparation in the maxillary sinus, as well as to propose 3 indexes for assessing the accuracy of lateral window preparation. Twenty 1:1 resin maxilla models were fabricated, all of which underwent preoperative CBCT and utilized the data to design 40 lateral windows. A task-autonomous dental robot was used to autonomously perform the preparation of 20 lateral windows according to the design under supervision, while another 20 lateral windows were prepared with freehand as control. Morphology of the postoperative lateral windows was obtained using oral scans for accuracy analysis. Three indexes (center displacement, area overlap ratio, and area difference) were used to evaluate the accuracy of lateral window preparation in 2 groups. The Shapiro-Wilk test was used to assess the normal distribution of all variables (α = 0.05), and the values of the 3 indexes were evaluated in both groups using 2 independent samples t-tests or rank sum tests, respectively. The lateral window prepared by the robot group had an area overlap ratio of 0.906 ± 0.038, an area difference of 1.65 (0.51, 2.58) mm², and a center displacement of 0.19 ± 0.09 mm, which was better than those in the freehand group (0.730 ± 0.105, 4.86 (1.22, 6.77) mm², and 1.19 ± 0.60 mm). The difference between the 2 groups was statistically significant (P < 0.05). The task-autonomous dental robot for maxillary sinus lateral window preparation proposed in this study is feasible, and the indexes used to evaluate the accuracy of window preparation are available. The task-autonomous dental robot prepared the lateral window with higher accuracy than the freehand preparation.