Digital vs. Traditional Radiography

At C. Rieger Wood DDS Inc., Dr. Wood and Dr. Jason Weilacher use dental technology that is proven to help patients receive effective oral health care. One example which we use in our Tulsa office is digital radiography. When compared to traditional radiographs, digital x-rays offer various benefits that lead to a better patient experience.

Lower Dosage

All x-ray machines involve some dosage of radiation to the patient in order to take an accurate, in-depth picture of your oral health. Traditional radiography exposes a patient to a perfectly safe amount of radiation, and the lead aprons you wear help protect you from absorbing too much of that radiation. From a health standpoint, traditional radiography is considered safe.

However, as safe as traditional radiography is, all health professionals agree that less radiation exposure is better than more. The digital x-ray machines used in our Tulsa dental office exposes patients to only a fraction of the radiation that traditional x-rays do. For patients who are monitoring their radiation exposure due to existing health conditions or certain risk factors, digital radiography is the preferred method of dental imaging.

Digital Image Storage

In traditional radiography, images of your dentition were taken on film, which then has to be properly processed and carefully stored. If you were referred out to a specialist, these images would need to be physically transported to the specialist you are seeing. If anything happened to compromise these images, you would have to endure another round of x-rays. In short, traditional x-rays had the potential to slow down the rest of your dental treatments because of the fragile nature of these images.

Digital radiography does not have these limits because digital x-ray machines do not use film. Each image Drs. Wood and Weilacher take are stored on a computer file instead. Not only does this mean that the images cannot be damaged, but copies of these images can be made much more easily. Shipping images by email instead of mail also means that the orthodontist, periodontist, oral surgeon, and endodontist we work with will receive those images quickly without issue. By overcoming the limits of traditional x-ray images, digital radiography can keep your dental treatment plans moving forward without delay.

Call Us Today!

C. Rieger Wood DDS Inc. uses digital radiography to perform dentistry in Tulsa, including the Utica Square and greater Tulsa areas. For more information about how our choice of technology leads to a better patient experience, call our office today!