It increases the area of patient exposure

"'This is false; collimation reduces the area of patient exposure

Collimatio

efers to the control 01 the size and shape of x-ray beam.

It is a basic rule of radiation hygiene that the radiation beam be as small as practical. For intraoral radiography, by state law, the diameter of a circular beam of radiation at the patient's skin
can be no greater than 3 inches. One can use a diaphragm or metal cylinders, cones or tubes
to collimate the beam.
These devices do not reduce the amount of radiation received by the exposed tissues, but
reduce the radiation to surrounding tissues due to x-ray beam divergence.
Aluminum disc filtration:
The x-ray beam consists of many different wavelengths. The short wavelength (high energy)
rays have great penetrating power; long wavelength (low energy) rays have low penetrating
power and do not reach the film in reasonable quantities since they are attenuated by the soft
tissues. Low energy rays add only to the total amount of radiation the patient receives.
Aluminum discs are used to filter out the useless long wave x-rays, Increasing the overall
quality of the beam.
Important: Filtration reduces patient dose, decreases contrast and decreases the density of
the film.