Digital Radiography

Radiographs (X-Rays) are fundamental and essential for the proper and careful diagnosis of our patients' dental and oral health.

Dental radiography, using regular film-based techniques, has been extremely safe. Our modern digital X-Ray facilities have made it even safer.

Instead of a film-packet being placed in the mouth a sensor, very similar in principle to the one found in digital cameras, is used. The sensors are significantly more sensitive than film, which means that significantly shorter exposures are required to produce the image.

Within a second or two after pressing the button the X-Ray image appears on the computer monitor.

This image can be manipulated to enhance the diagnostic benefit from it. It also allows us to demonstrate with ease to our patients in greater detail the condition of their teeth and the surrounding bone.

An OPG is a special type of radiograph that is extremely useful in dentistry. It provides an image of the entire jaw and the surrounding structures on a single image. While it is not as clear or detailed as the small intra-oral images, an OPG provides a great deal of useful information that would be difficult to obtain any other way. Often infections, cysts or even life-threatening tumours are found as 'incidental findings' on OPGs (see below). It is with this in mind that it is recommended that OPGs be taken every few years.

Our state of the art OPG machine allows us to get a clear and accurate image within a minute or two, which is a great help for us to diagnose your problems and plan suitable treatment.

The patient whose OPG is shown below presented complaining of pain in the area of his impacted lower right wisdom tooth (blue arrow). We took an OPG as part of our diagnosis process.

The OPG showed that the lower right wisdom tooth was a problem that could easily be treated, but it revealed a far more serious problem on the left. An extremely large cyst (outlined by the red arrows) had grown in association with the impacted lower left wisdom tooth (green arrow). The cysts has caused severe destruction of the the bone in his jaw, requiring a very large operation to treat.