Welcome to Dentistry 101.

Today, we're going to discuss oral and maxillofacial

radiology as a specialty and the role that it plays in dentistry and the
applications of this specialty in different fields. So, we'll start by introducing
ourselves. I'm Erika Benavides. I'm one of the Oral and Maxillofacial Radiology
professors at the University of Michigan School of Dentistry, and I have been here
since 2006. Hi, I'm Fabiana Soki, and I'm also a professor at University of
Michigan in Oral and Maxillofacial Radiology. So, let me start introducing oral and
maxillofacial radiology. So, oral and maxillofacial radiology is one of the nine
recognized specialties by the American Dental Association. It's involved in imaging
and how we can use imaging to enhance the treatment and the diagnosis of the
diseases of the teeth and the jaw. For you to become an oral and maxillofacial
radiology, you have to complete two to three years of training after the dental
school, and there are some programs that offer a combined Masters and PhD training
with the certificate training. So, radiology is also an essential field in
dentistry because it's involved in so many areas, from the diagnostic of diseases
to the treatment, planning, and evaluation assessment. So, because of that, oral
and maxillofacial radiology gets to interact with all the different dental
specialties. So, let's talk about the role of oral and maxillofacial radiology in
the dental field. So, our role can be divided into four main areas: we provide
assistance with image acquisition, we also interpret images, we provide education,
and we also contribute to research. So, in the area of image acquisition, we are
going to help provide the best image quality for the patients and select the best
imaging modality, depending on the patients' needs. We're also responsible for
protecting the patients from the effects of ionizing radiation. So, that's also
something that we keep always in mind. As far as interpreting the scans or the
radiographs, we assist with the diagnosis and also the evaluation of disease
progression and treatment outcomes, and we provide recommendations for management
and followup evaluation, depending on the condition. As far as research and
education, we educate not only the patients and the public, but we also contribute
to training and education of the members of the dental and oral health care teams.
We also provide research in the area to advance the field. Yes. As you mentioned,
we also participate actively in the education of the dental students as well as the
dental hygienists and dental assistant students. That's very important because we
can then teach them to have the knowledge and the skills so that they can apply
radiology in their routine practices. We can do that by teaching them the theoretic
courses when we teach them the didactic material, where they can learn the theory
and basic principles of different imaging modalities. We can also teach them
important concepts on radiation, safety, and protection as well as introduce them a
very important systematic approach of how to analyze and interpret the images. So,
once they have learned the theory, they can then go into a more practical session
where they can go to the real laboratory to practice in the mannequins, as was
shown here, and in the clinics where they can practice with the patients. That's a
very important step because with that, they can learn all the skills to critically
evaluate the radiographs that have been taken. So, with that, then, they move on to
smaller interpretation sessions, where they can present to their students cases
that were assigned ahead of time so that they can present the most important
findings. They can also go into the reading room, where they can present their
actual patients that they're working on, and then, we can discuss their cases. As
far as the imaging modalities in dentistry, we have several intraoal and extraoral
types of radiographs. For example, here, we see periapical radiographs that are
going to cover the entire tooth and the bone around the roots. We have bitewing
radiographs that are ideal for interproximal caries detection and to evaluate the
bone level around the teeth. We also have occlusal radiographs that are going to
help you see things that are either in the palate or the floor of the mouth. In
this example, we see a sialolith, which is a salivary stone. We also have extraoral
imaging modalities like panoramic radiography and lateral cephalometric images that
are going to have a broader coverage of the jaws and the surrounding structures. We
have also available to us cone beam CT or computer cone beam CT technology or
computer tomography that is going to allow us to see the images three dimensionally
and evaluate the patients' teeth, from the soft tissue to the bone and the
relationship of the teeth to the bone. Like in this case, on this patient, we can
see also the presence of a lesion and evaluate the proximity of the lesion to the
inferior alveolar canal and the proximity of the impacted tooth that is associated
with the lesion to other teeth and also the effect of the lesion on surrounding
structures, as we can see on this video. These are also cone beam CT images of the
same patient, where we can see images like looking at the patient from underneath,
looking at the patient from the side, and looking at the patient from the front,
where we can see the effect of the lesion in the bone and the expansion that the
lesion is causing and also the relationship of this lesion to other important
structures in the vicinity. So, as far as emerging technologies in the field of
radiology, we can divide them into optimization of existing modalities. For
example, we have a research being done to provide a lower radiation cone beam CT
scans and also to reduce the number of artifacts that we see on these scans. There
is also a lot of research being done in applying artificial intelligence to do a
computer-assisted diagnosis. We also have another field that works in the
application of existing medical imaging modalities to the dental field. For
example, we have dental MRI, dental ultrasound, and dental optical coherence
tomography that are being developed and applied to dentistry more specifically. So,
in addition to that, there is a lot of research being done in education, better
methods to educate our students and the public about radiology in general. So, to
summarize, oral and maxillofacial radiology plays an essential role in many aspects
of the dental field because, as you mentioned, it's rapidly evolving field with all
these new technologies that are constantly arising and the possibilities of
applying different medical imaging modalities into the dental field. It's both
exciting and promising. So, with that, we'd like to thank you for the opportunity
to be presenting and talking about our specialty, that's oral and maxillofacial
radiology. We hope you enjoyed the video. Thank you so much for watching.