The effect of beam collimation in lateral radiographic cephalometry

A study was carried out to compare the image contrast of lateral cephalometric radiographs taken with and without the modified beam collimation and to evaluate the effect of this on the reliability of cephalometric measurements. The findings indicated that the cephalographs taken with modified beam collimation consistently showed a higher image contrast than the cephalographs taken with standard beam collimation. Despite this, however, there was no significant difference in the reliability of cephalometric measurements between the two groups of films.