General & preventive
CBCT 3D Scanning
A cone-beam scan builds a three-dimensional picture of your jaw in under a minute, on a Morita machine chosen because it does it at a very low radiation dose.
- The scanner we use
- Morita
- Radiation dose
- Very low
- Time in the machine
- Under a minute
What a cone-beam scan is
An ordinary dental X-ray is a shadow: everything in the beam is flattened into one picture, and a root sitting behind a nerve looks as though it sits on top of it.
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A CBCT rotates around your head and reconstructs the jaw as a solid volume, which can then be sliced in any direction on screen.
The Morita machine, and the dose
We chose Morita because of how little radiation its scans take.
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It images only the region being examined rather than the whole head, and at the field size a single implant site needs the dose is a small fraction of a medical CT. It is still an X-ray and we take one when it will change a decision — not routinely.
Where it changes the plan
Implants above all: the height and width of available bone, and exactly where the nerve canal and the sinus floor run, are the difference between a guided placement and a guess.
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It also settles awkward wisdom teeth, root fractures that a flat X-ray hides, and infections whose real extent is not visible in two dimensions.
What happens on the day
You stand or sit still with your chin on a rest while the arm makes one slow rotation around you.
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There is nothing to hold in your mouth and nothing to bite on. The images are on the screen beside you immediately, and we go through them with you rather than filing them away.
