Digital X-Rays
Just like in any medical or scientific industry, there has been a lot of innovations in the field of dentistry through the years. At Ashley Family Dental, we use modern technology because it has so many advantages over older, outdated methods. That’s why we use digital x-rays instead of traditional xrays.
What’s The Difference?
Digital x-rays operate under the same principle as traditional x-rays. With digital x-rays, we also use a safe level of radiation to illuminate the areas inside your body so we can look at your teeth and your jawbone under the gum tissue.
What’s different is that the images we produce are digital. With the digital version, we can enlarge the photo on the screen. There’s no need to squint at a traditional x-ray picture to see some of the finer details. You can just zoom in and see those details more clearly.
In fact, you can make changes to the image to make them clearer. For example, you can change the colors so that contrasts between areas can be more obvious. You can flip the colors so that the dark colors are light while the light colors become dark.
With all these possible enhancements, we can make more accurate diagnoses of our patients’ dental problems. We can have a more exact measurement of the teeth so that we will know what the problem is. We can devise dental solutions such as tooth extractions more accurately, and we can recommend various dental devices that will fit your teeth and mouth precisely.
Finally, the digital x-ray image won’t ever wear down or become damaged. We even let our patients save several copies of the image on a hard disk or online. You can make changes to the image and make new versions, and you can save these new images on a hard disk while the original image remains unchanged. These images can easily be accessed through any computer when you save the images online. You won’t have to hunt for these digital x-rays like you would for traditional x-rays.
Additional Advantages
Do you remember how long it took to “develop” a picture with an old camera that used negatives? Compare that to how quickly you get your pictures when you use a digital camera. With digital x-rays, it’s the same thing.
For example, we may take a series of x-rays over a period of 1 month to see how your teeth are progressing with a particular dental procedure. It may take as much as 15 minutes to make all these images in the darkroom. But with digital x-rays, you can immediately see the pictures on the monitor.
