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Quantitative dental radiography with a new photostimulable phosphor system
1Washington University, Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, St. Louis, MO 63130, USA.
Objective:
The purposes of this report are to present a quantitative model for digital oral radiography and to evaluate a new photostimulable phosphor system for bone mass measurements.
Study Design:
Noise, linearity, and precision were measured from stepwedge images and blank images through use of a special least-squares calibration method. The model was used to estimate lower limits of detection for observing small changes in bone mineral content.
Results:
The response was virtually linear, and the noise level of 2% to 3% is less than that of digitized film images. The precision of measurements averaged over a region of interest was generally better than 0.5%.
Conclusions:
If the scatter fraction is measured for each patient, bone loss can be measured by using only extraoral standards. Assuming a scatter fraction of 50% and considering only instrumental errors, the detection limit is <0.02 g/cm(2) for large image areas (> or =7 mm(2)) and <0.3 mg over areas of 1 mm(2) or smaller.