The clinical image quality created by an intraoral digital imaging system using Digora
® was evaluated by comparing it with conventional Ektaspeed
® Plus film. An imaging plate (IP) of the Digora
® system was inserted into the packet which contained a film in the front wrapped with black paper to protect the IP from light. Both Digora
® and film images can be obtained at the same time in the same geometry. The exposure time which gave the proper density was determined for observation of the film image. A hundred periapical images for each system were obtained in a total of 45 patients. The clinical usefulness of each system was assessed based on the visibility of the anatomical structures and the pathologic conditions in the coronal, alveolar and the apical regions. The evaluation was made separately for each system at an interval of 1 week. Five observers were asked to evaluate the image quality in assessing pathologic conditions of these regions using the following five-point rating scale: 1, excellent; 2, good; 3, fair; 4, poor; and 5, not acceptable. Three to 5% of the answers were “not acceptable” on the images by Digora
® system compared with 5-10% by film images. The number of “not acceptable” answers is significantly lower in the Digora
® system than the film in the apical region of the upper and lower anterior teeth and the alveolar region of the lower posterior teeth using chisquare test. The results were also compared using Wilcoxon's signed rank test for each observer. The results showed that: 1) in the coronal region, two of five observers judged the Digora
® systsm to be either better or worse than film, 2) in the alveolar region, all observers agreed that the Digora
® system was better than or equal to film, and 3) in the apical region, four of them judged Digora
® to be better than or equal to film. These results suggest that the Digora
® system could be used for a variety of dental diagnostic purposes.
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