Radiographs in Dentistry

If you’ve been to visit our dentist in Eagle Rock recently, then you might have gotten a radiograph, or often called an x-ray. These show the hard tissue, such as the tooth and bone, and it’ll give you the proper diagnosis. Now, for an ideal radiograph, you should make sure that you have four things: good dentistry, sharpness, contrast, and an accurate positioning. If these are not fulfilled, it often results in a radiograph that is faulty, which then lowers the chance of diagnosis of various conditions, and that actually leads to an inability to decide on the correct sort of treatment.

Now, let’s take a look at the important parts of defining a radiograph, and why it’s important to actually know about this. Of course, it’s a good thing to know your dentistry, so that you’re not given the wrong treatment plan. The dark or black areas on a radiograph, such as the soft tissue and the lack of hard tissue is often identified by the black regions. These often are changed based on the density of the kV in the radiograph, so it’s important to realize these when diagnosing.

The contrast is another part. This is the darkness on the radiograph, which will tell you the borders, and if the contrast is too low or too high, you might not be able to tell this.

If the x-ray isn’t shape, it won’t tell you what the problem is accurately, and you want one that will tell you the borders and outlines of the teeth any restoration that is done there.

There are a few falls that could happen, and it’s important to know of these. The first, is something called foreshortening of the image, which refers to the images of the teeth looking short in a sense. The cause of this is often because of a large vertical angle on the tube taking the radiograph. This does make it hard in cases of endodontic treatment, since the working length isn’t properly determined.

Then, there is the elongation of the image, which makes the teeth and the structures much longer than they should be. The causes of this are simple, which is simple because of the angle once again when the x-ray captures it, and often, this won’t determine the correct length of this when trying to determine the solutions to these procedures.

There is also the case of elongation of a few of the teeth, which is the case where a few teeth are made longer while some are kept at the same length. The case of this is actually from the excessive bleeding of the film when putting the x-ray into the mouth. The region where the teeth and supporting structures are overly bent is actually where it’s elongated. The solution to this is to only use a gentle bend in order to get the right contour of the structures such as the palate and the mouth. There is also the chance of bending when you’re trying to get the canines and the premolar areas because of the contour of the palate.

Finally, there is overlapping the surfaces, particularly the proximal ones. This is from a wrong horizontal angulation. The overlapping of this does make the x-ray impractical in many cases. If you put it too forward or too backwards in respect to where the beam is, then it’ll create the situation.

The best way to know all of these is to look at a correct x-ray, and then each of these conditions. It’ll definitely show.

As a patient, you might not even know that this is going on, but there are occasionally faults in x-rays that should be looked into. You can talk to your Eagle Rock dentist if you feel like there is something amiss with this. For many people, they don’t even realize that these are happening until they read an article like this, for they believe that the dentist might be doing it right. However, while a radiograph is one of the best diagnostic tools out there, there is room for error if you use it wrong, so it’s important to realize when it’s being used wrong on a patient.