Like X-rays taken in other parts of your body, dental X-rays use electromagnetic radiation to capture images of your mouth. The radiation beam passes through your soft tissues and creates images of your teeth and bones..
How many mSv are in a dental x-ray?
DENTAL
Procedure
Approximate effective radiation dose
Dental X-ray
0.005 mSv
Panoramic X-ray
0.025 mSv
Cone Beam CT
0.18 mSv
.
How many sieverts of radiation are in an x-ray?
For instance: A single chest x-ray exposes the patient to about 0.1 mSv. This is about the same amount of radiation people are exposed to naturally over the course of about 10 days..
BENEFITS OF DENTAL RADIOGRAPHS Dental radiographs can alert your dentist to changes in your hard and soft tissues. In chil- dren, radiographs allow the dentist to see how their teeth and jawbones are developing.
intraoral dental X ray imaging procedure 1–8 μSv; panoramic examinations 4-30 μSv; cephalometric examinations 2-3 μSv, CBCT procedures (based on median values from literature): 50 μSv or below for small- or medium-sized scanning volumes, and 100 μSv for large volumes.
So how do dental x-rays compare? A single intraoral image transmits about 4 microsieverts of radiation.
How is radiation measured during dental X-rays?
Radiation is measured in units called Sieverts
Because of the small amount of radiation emitted during dental x-rays, it is measured in MicroSieverts (one millionth of a Sievert)
Many patients are concerned about the amount of radiation we get from dental x-rays, so we’d like to give you something to compare this to
What does a sievert represent?
The sievert represents the stochastic effects of ionizing radiation as adjusted by a tissue weighting factor to account for differing responses of different human tissues to ionizing radiation and the differing effects of different forms and energies of this radiation
What is a sievert in radiation risk assessment?
The sievert is intended to represent the stochastic health risk, which for radiation dose assessment is defined as the probability of radiation-induced cancer and genetic damage
One sievert carries with it a 5
5% chance of eventually developing cancer based on the linear no-threshold model
A regular dental x-ray, like the one being taken in the picture above, exposes the patient to roughly 10 micro sieverts of radiation. If the dentist is using an old-style dental film, then more radiation is needed and that number can climb to around 22 micro sieverts.
Dental x ray sieverts
SI unit of equivalent dose of ionizing radiation
The sievert is a unit in the International System of Units (SI) intended to represent the stochastic health risk of ionizing radiation, which is defined as the probability of causing radiation-induced cancer and genetic damage. The sievert is important in dosimetry and radiation protection. It is named after Rolf Maximilian Sievert, a Swedish medical physicist renowned for work on radiation dose measurement and research into the biological effects of radiation.
