Practical Skills Tutorial for Dental Practitioners: Normal Full Mouth Curved Tomography

5. Normal full-mouth curved cross-sectional radiographs

Normal full-mouth curved cross-sectional radiographs are divided into three positions: maxillary, mandibular, and full-mouth teeth. Among them, full-mouth curved cross-sectional radiographs are the most common. Often, the whole-mouth curved tomographic film can show the bilateral maxillary and mandibular bones, maxillary sinuses, temporomandibular joints, and the entire mouth of teeth on one film. That is, the whole mouth of teeth and the entire jaw are flatly unfolded on the curved tomographic film, and the mandible The ascending condyle, coracoid process, mandibular foramen, the mandibular canal running forward and downward, and the mental foramen below the root apex of the premolar area can all be displayed. The transverse dense image above the apex of the upper teeth is the hard palate. The image with low density in the middle and upper part of the hard palate represents the nasal cavity, and the image of the zygomatic bone and zygomatic arch can also partially show it. Sometimes a longitudinal dense shadow can be seen in the center of the jaw, which is caused by the overlapping projection of the cervical vertebrae.

Full-mouth curved tomographic films are often used to observe maxillary and mandibular tumors, trauma, inflammation, deformity and other lesions and their relationship with surrounding tissues. The mandibular and maxillary curved tomographic films are mainly used to observe the lesions of the mandible and maxilla respectively, and the corresponding images they display are often clearer than those on the full-mouth dental curved tomographic films.

「Thinking Questions」

Try to describe the imaging characteristics of full-mouth curved tomographic films.