Image quality evaluation of eight complementary metal-oxide semiconductor intraoral digital X-ray sensors

Purpose: To evaluate the image quality generated by eight commercially available intraoral sensors.

Methods: Eighteen clinicians ranked the quality of a bitewing acquired from one subject using eight different intraoral sensors. Analytical methods used to evaluate clinical image quality included the Visual Grading Characteristics method, which helps to quantify subjective opinions to make them suitable for analysis.

Results: The Dexis sensor was ranked significantly better than Sirona and Carestream-Kodak sensors; and the image captured using the Carestream-Kodak sensor was ranked significantly worse than those captured using Dexis, Schick and Cyber Medical Imaging sensors. The Image Works sensor image was rated the lowest by all clinicians. Other comparisons resulted in non-significant results.

Conclusions: None of the sensors was considered to generate images of significantly better quality than the other sensors tested. Further research should be directed towards determining the clinical significance of the differences in image quality reported in this study.