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Updated: Aug 9, 2026

Accuracy in Dental Medicine, A New Way to Measure Trueness and Precision
Published on: April 29, 2014
Subjective image quality of digitally filtered radiographs acquired by the Dürr Vistascan system compared with
S Yalcinkaya1, A Künzel, R Willers
1Department of Oral Surgery, Heinrich Heine University, Düsseldorf, Germany.
Objectives:
To compare the different digital filters implemented in the Dürr Vistascan system with conventional film and to analyze the filter specificity to anatomic structures.
Study Design:
Ten panoramic image pairs and 10 periapical image pairs (1 digital and 1 conventional) were obtained from 20 patients conventionally and digitally. The display quality of different anatomic image structures was rated subjectively on a 5-point scale. The responses were evaluated using ANOVA and Tukey-Kramer post hoc tests. The intraobserver reliability was evaluated by Cohen's kappa statistics.
Results:
The display quality of anatomic structures was rated higher by using Caries 1 or 2 filters for periapical and Periodontal 1 or 2 filters for panoramic images, whereas nonfiltered and Noise Reduction-filtered images received the lowest scorings compared to all other digital image modalities (P < or = .0097). The superiority of conventional radiographs to the digital ones was statistically significant (P < or = .0039 and P < or = .0152 respectively).
Conclusions:
Depending on the diagnostic task, digital images of the Vistascan system should be filtered before examination. Perfect conventional radiographs still remain the gold standard for image quality.
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