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At dentist, before operation I got one tooth X-Rayed. I had to hold a small tablet inside my mouth and the scanner was positioned next to my cheek. The device look like this:

dental xray machine

How does this machine work? I'm not sure where the source and detector are in setup like this. The tablet had no cable attached and yet the image appeared on screen almost immediately. Is the table source of radiation? Or does it work like a "mirror" reflecting rays back at the machine?

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  • $\begingroup$ How big was the "tablet"? I know the object in the picture is usually the source and the things they stick in your mouth are usually detectors. They used to be film, but in the past few years mine have been digital with a cord coming out. Perhaps, it's still digital in this case and just transmits the data wirelessly and is battery powered. I don't think it could be a mirror as then the x-rays would pass through your teeth twice, producing two images. It would be very difficult to align the images (unless they were using three mirrors but that would be even bigger?) $\endgroup$
    – Eph
    Commented Feb 2, 2015 at 14:27
  • $\begingroup$ Hard to say exact dimensions. But it was somewhere around 2cm by 5cm. $\endgroup$
    – jnovacho
    Commented Feb 2, 2015 at 14:28
  • $\begingroup$ How about thickness? Could a watch battery + circuity fit in it? $\endgroup$
    – Eph
    Commented Feb 2, 2015 at 14:30
  • $\begingroup$ Sorry, I didn't have a good look. But I guess watch or maybe coin battery would fit. $\endgroup$
    – jnovacho
    Commented Feb 2, 2015 at 14:40

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The device on the armature is a compact, commercial, bremsstrahlung-xray source. These have been used in dental officess for decades with both film and solid-state detector system

Presumably the object you placed inside your mouth was a battery powered, pixelated solid-state detector of some kind. They can be as simple as CCDs like those in a digital camera. If I were designing it I would give it a wireless communications capability to minimize the number of ports.

The ones my last couple of dentists used had wired detectors. They just ran the wires in on the back of the wand the technician used to position the detector.

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  • $\begingroup$ I happened to have a dentist appointment today. I asked. She said that she is not aware of a wireless device. In fact, I have no memory of a wire, but there definitely was a wire; that's the type my dentist has. What she actually said was "No, they all have wires." But I doubt that she would know about every devices out there. A google search of "wireless dental x-ray" gets hits, but a quick survey of the results show detectors that have short wires connected to a transceiver of some kind. $\endgroup$
    – garyp
    Commented Feb 3, 2015 at 3:49

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