Comparisons of Stereoscopic Viewing Devices in Digital Dental Stereoradiography

Abstract

This paper presents a brief overview of the applications of stereoscopic viewing in various medical fields and dental application was selected for performance evaluation using the proposed viewing apparatus. Because of the prevalence of digital imaging in radiology and the developments of electronic three-dimensional (3D) viewing devices, digital stereoradiography will become an efficient and economical way for improving the diagnostic efficacy. A viewing system based on one compact mirror and two flat-panel LCD monitors to achieve high resolution of digital dental stereoradiography is proposed and its effectiveness was evaluated. The performance based on student’s paired t-test revealed that the proposed viewing method shows statistical significance compared with the other two popular approaches. Clinical use of the viewing instruments can be expected to show similar results.