title: How going digital will affect the dental office.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  The impact of digital imaging on dental practice depends upon the degree of planning conducted before implementation. Digital technologies have the potential to improve diagnosis; facilitate patient treatment procedures; and streamline storage, transfer and retrieval. These technologies also provide for secure backup of patients' image data, critical to re-establishing the practice should fire, flood or earthquake occur.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The decision to invest in digital radiographic equipment should be a simple one for dental practitioners. Although digital x-ray sensors have long equaled analog film for diagnostic tasks, they have several advantages over film radiography, including immediate image production with solid-state devices; interactive display on a monitor with the ability to enhance image features and make direct measurements; integrated storage with access to images through practice management software systems; security of available backup and off-site archiving; perfect radiographic duplicates to accompany referrals; security mechanisms to identify original images and differentiate them from altered images; the ability to tag information such as a patient identifier, date of exposure and other relevant details; and interoperability of the Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine file format.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Most clinicians should contemplate integrating, at a minimum, intraoral digital x-ray sensors and a digital panoramic system into their practices.
authors.affiliation: Department of Surgical/Hospital Dentistry, University of Louisville School of Dentistry, 501 S. Preston St., Louisville, KY 40292, USA. agfarm01@louisville.edu
authors.forename: Allan G
authors.initials: AG
authors.lastname: Farman
authors.forename: Claudio M
authors.initials: CM
authors.lastname: Levato
authors.forename: David
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Gane
authors.forename: William C
authors.initials: WC
authors.lastname: Scarfe