The most revealing decision a clinician makes about a radiograph is often whether to take it at all. The first ADA and AAOMR patient-selection recommendations in more than a decade - and the first to address cone-beam CT - reframe imaging not as a schedule...
A wall-mounted X-ray head is a fixed instrument, aligned by a stable arm and switched from behind a wall. A handheld unit puts the same tube in one gloved hand and asks the clinician to be both aimer and tripod. The device has become common...
A thyroid collar is an act of care that photographs badly. In a rotating panoramic beam, the very material that stops the dose can cast a ghost across the jaw - and the guidelines have begun to ask whether the protection was worth the picture...
We are trained to fear the dose. We are rarely trained to fear the missed diagnosis. A cone-beam scan is a decision between two risks, not one - and the picture that goes unmade has a cost of its own....
A flawed radiograph discovered at read-out is a retake that rarely happens. Software that grades technical quality while the sensor is still in the mouth changes the economics of getting it right the first time....
A handheld X-ray unit is a beautiful piece of engineering, and it puts the source of the beam in the operator's own hand. The image it makes is identical to the wall-mounted tube's. The dose it delivers to the person holding it is not....