Testing X-ray Source Configurations in Stationary Intraoral Tomosynthesis

Since the earliest days of dental radiography, projection imaging has been the primary means of radiographic assessment during routine examination of the dentition. The sensitivity for carious lesion detection through projection imaging, hovering no higher than about 65%, leaves considerable room for improvement, and one of the contemporary approaches along these lines is the exploration of stationary intraoral tomosynthesis, or s-IOT. In this method, a distributed multi-beam x-ray source array is used to rapidly acquire several projection images which are subsequently used to reconstruct a quasi-3D image stack: a set of 45 image slices which together represent the volume of anatomy under assessment. In this work, we begin with the historical evolution of dento-alveolar imaging, from the earliest projection imaging to various forms of sectional imaging to ultimately reach s-IOT. We then do a deeper foray into our s-IOT unit, covering its design specifications as well as physics-based components that differentiate it from the norm in x-ray imaging devices. Our final chapter is an exploration of the multi-beam source geometry used in s-IOT, to determine how specific variations in this geometry as well as variations in photon flux can affect overall image quality, with a particular emphasis on contact opening and fracture detection.Master of Scienc