Radiography is an essential tool in dental practice and almost all patients will need a radiograph at some point during a course of treatment. Successful radiography requires well-maintained and safe equipment, careful film handling, accurate technique and controlled processing. Once a radiograph is produced it must be interpreted correctly. This book aims to provide a guide to successful radiological interpretation.

In preparing the book, we made an early decision to focus principally upon the more common radiological diagnostic tasks. While the choice of subjects making up the chapters is fairly predictable, the content was influenced heavily by the correspondence each of us has had with dentists in general practice over the years. General dental practitioners frequently send radiographs to us for an opinion, a service we are happy to provide. Time has informed us that certain conditions, anomalies and lesions recur as diagnostic problems, and we have used this experience to help design this book.

Radiology is an expanding clinical discipline, with new technologies adding to the traditional armamentarium of x-ray set and film or cassette. However, in this book we make no apologies for sticking with the more traditional images that make up the overwhelming workload of the average dentist. In particular, we have decided to concentrate upon intraoral radiography, although there are some exceptions. In some places we refer to “image receptor,” to acknowledge the increasing use of digital radiographic systems in dentistry.

Click here to order Dental Radiographs now, or view the table of contents, preface, or author bios from the textbook Interpreting Dental Radiographs.
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