Santé dentaire : recherche actuelle

History of Digital Detectors in Intraoral Radiography

Midori Yoshida, Hozumi Yoshihara and Eiichi Honda

The first digital sensor used in intraoral radiography, RadioVisioGraphy was introduced in 1987. It was based on the activity of a charged-Coupled Device (CCD) sensor. Later on, other digital sensors became commercially available, including the Digora featuring an imaging plate coated with photostimulable phosphor (PSP) in 1994 and the complementary metal-oxide semiconductorbased sensor, CDR active pixel sensor, in 1998. These technologies have recently undergone considerable improvement, and several dental clinics have switched from film-based systems to digital imaging. In the early days, digital sensors were considered inferior to film in clinical diagnostics, but according to recent research results, there is no longer any significant difference because of the improvement in performance. However, our latest research using a new evaluation method and a precise phantom model indicated some differences between the performance of CCD and PSP systems and further differences between PSP systems of different function and performance.