Low-Level Radiation/Digital X-rays

New systems are emerging that use computer technology to provide large, sharp images of a patient's mouth while exposing the patient to as little as 10 percent of the radiation received during film x-rays.

The systems use a sensor that is placed in the mouth, where it reacts to the x-ray emission much like the way a video camera records light and forms an image. The collections of electrons that the sensor registered are then transferred to the computer, where a circuit board translates them to digital data and displays the image on a monitor. The dentist and the patient can look at the image on the monitor almost immediately. And like other computerized images, the dental picture can be highlighted in colors, enlarged, stored on the computer's hard disk, transferred over the phone lines to other dentists, specialists or insurers - and printed out for the patient to take home.