Cone beam computed tomography in craniofacial imaging

Cone beam computed tomography (CT) has the potential to reduce the size and cost of CT scanners. Because this emerging technology produces images with isotropic submillimeter spatial resolution, it is ideally suited for dedicated dentomaxillofacial CT scanning. When combined with application-specific software tools, cone beam computed tomography can provide dentomaxillofacial practitioners with a complete solution for performing specific diagnostic and surgical tasks, such as dental implant planning. In this paper, we provide a brief overview of cone beam scanning technology and compare it with the fan beam scanning used in conventional CT scanners. We introduce 'DentoCAT', a relatively small, low-cost cone beam CT scanner dedicated for dentomaxillofacial imaging developed at Xoran Technologies. We present images generated by the DentoCAT scanner and provide an assessment of its performance in terms of spatial resolution and effective radiation dose. Finally, we illustrate the clinical utility of the scanner by presenting the results we have obtained to date using the DentoCAT scanner in conjunction with an implant planning software tool.