Archives

Introduction: Digital imaging is recently used in dentistry as substitute for conventional film-based radiography. It has many advantages and new possibilities for recording and interpreting radiographic data.
Objective: The objective of this study was to identify different types of intraoral photostimulable phosphor plate image artifacts and classify them as operator error artifacts, scanner artifacts, and plate artifacts with their frequency of occurrence.
Materials and Method: A retrospective chart review was conducted between 25th April, 2022 to 31st May 2022 at Department of Oral Medicine and Radiology after the ethical approval. Complete enumeration method was used to include all the intraoral images taken by size two photostimulable phosphor plates between January 2020 to January 2022 in the archives of dental radiology. The artifacts were identified and classified into operator error artifacts, scanner artifacts, and plate artifacts. The data were entered in Microsoft Excel sheet and transferred to SPSS v.20 for analysis and descriptive statistics was performed.
Result: Of 11,700 radiographs evaluated, 10,146 (86.76%) had artifacts. There were total of 14,682 (63.35%) photostimulable phosphor plate related artifacts, 6,845 (29.53%) operator related artifacts and 1,639 (7.07%) scanner related artifacts. There were nine (0.03%) artifacts which remained unidentified.
Conclusion: The most common artifact identified was photostimulable phosphor plate related artifact including partial stripping and scratches. Following this was ambient light induced artifacts under operator related artifacts. The least common artifacts were scanner related artifacts under which roller artifact was common.

Artifacts; digital dental radiography; photostimulable phosphor plate.