What are Digital X-Rays?
A digital dental X-ray gives Tooth Town Dentistry for Kids a more complete view of your child’s oral health than a regular exam. This technology, also called digital radiography, furnishes a detailed picture of the teeth, bones, and soft tissues surrounding your child’s teeth and jawbones. Consequently, your general dentist for kids can identify and address developmental problems, damage, or disease before they escalate.
Benefits of Digital X-Rays
Immediate Access
Digital X-rays produce an image readily displayed on a screen. This saves time over waiting for conventional X-rays to develop. Your child’s dental professional can also enhance digital X-rays to optimize their usefulness in diagnosing and treatment planning.
Environmentally Friendly Storage
Digitized dental X-ray images are easily scanned for electronic storage and transmittal. In addition, they’re much easier to retrieve and share than conventional X-rays. Further, digitization does not require the use of hazardous chemicals and increasing physical storage space.
Lower Radiation
Research suggests that digital X-ray equipment produces up to 70% less radiation than traditional X-ray equipment. This means that your child may incur significantly lower risks of side effects from long-term X-ray exposure.
Methods of Digitizing Dental X-Rays
Your dental office can use direct, indirect, or semi-indirect methods to digitize and scan your images. With the direct method, dental assistants place an electronic sensor in the mouth to record images. The indirect digital method utilizes an X-ray film scanner which views standard dental X-rays as digital images. The semi-indirect method combines a sensor and scanner to transform conventional dental X-rays into digital film.
Types of Digital Dental X-Rays
The dental professionals at Tooth Town Dentistry for Kids take intraoral digital images inside the mouth or extraoral images outside the mouth. Intraoral X-rays are the most common type. Their sharp detail makes them ideal for detecting cavities, checking developing teeth, and assessing teeth and bone health. Extraoral X-rays pinpoint impacted teeth, observe jaw development and check for potential issues between teeth, jaws, and other facial bones.
Digital X-rays are an important part of your child’s dental treatment plan. To limit your child’s exposure to radiation, your children’s dentist should perform only as many X-rays as necessary for a thorough examination. Feel free to ask our dental professionals here at Tooth Town Dentistry for Kids about the frequency or types of digital X-rays they use or recommend. Schedule a dental exam for your child today and let our team help keep their smile healthy and bright.
