Radiology is an incredibly important topic in all of dentistry-- It interacts with all the specialties as well as general dentists. It is really the scaffold on which many of the other technologies rely. USDA is the premier dental school as regards Oral Maxillofacial Radiology for a number of reasons. DMD students have access to multiple technologies and Cone Beam CT, as well as digital technology for intraoral scanning. And we've been fortunate since 2004, to be completely digital, and being able to share images with all of our specialties and general dentist as well. And all the students have access to that when they arrive here. We started with the basics part of radiology that, if needed, physics, biology aspects. It's a very didactic course that would cover all those basic concepts. But right after that, we started with a lot of hands on activities. So at first, we teach the students how to take different intraoral imaging. So we cover all aspects of intraoral imaging, and then we move on to extra oral imaging and panoramic radiographs and even Cone Beam CT. Students interact with all of the imaging technologies here but more importantly-- the images. They do that through participation in seminars and programs, where we share images, and we do that through two separate PAC systems or picture archiving, and communication systems. One is intraoral imaging, and the other is for Cone Beam CT AG. And we are one of the only schools in the United States where this technology is available at every clinical site within the whole of the dental school. Our role as teachers in oral maxillofacial radiology is to prepare all the students so that they have competency in all technologies when they leave the school. The faculty here in our radiology department are very involved. We have three faculty members and their primary and principal role is to assist the MD students, get acclimatized, not only did the technology, but also to the techniques. Here we like to students take their own images for everything. And sometimes they take those images when a patient is on screening, the first time that a patient is here. They may find something that they haven't never seen before. So instead of having like, oh, they can have to make a request, and look for us in a few days from now, we say that we have an open door. Just come at any time-- You're going to find one of us here. We're going to take a look at that image together. We're going to describe it-- like do some differential diagnosis, and help with that because we feel that it's much better when a patient is to hear sometimes to sitting on the chair. The imaging that we acquire in radiology, forms the basis of many treatment plans that we provide the students. It also forms the basis sometimes of producing surgical guides which provide better, more efficient, and cheaper treatment plans for the patients.
