Pano

Panoramic radiograph of my jaw (from today), 6.5 months after surgery.

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Scanning Film Radiographs

Today I played around with scanning the older film radiographs that were taken of me when I had braces. I talked about them here.

I tried quite a few things before I was able to get my scanner to achieve half-way decent images.

And I could not just scan the radiograph like it was a regular sheet of paper. There was not enough light reflected by imaging lamp off of the lid.

So I improvised and took a sheet of white printer paper and backlight it with a 40-watt clear bulb. The printer paper acts like a diffuser, so that you don’t get saturation near the light and no illumination away from it.

The settings I used where color photo (fine detail) scanned between 300-600 dpi. The scans weren’t always reproducible; I had to scan several times before I got one that was half-way decent. I did this using TWAIN acquire in GIMP 2.0 and then re-sized them.

EDIT: I don’t think the dark is necessary; I had a case of insomnia and didn’t want to wake up my SO by turning on the light.

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Older Film Pano Xrays

Last Friday, I went by my former orthodontist’s office.  They’re open a short day, I think just for emergencies.  It’s been about 4 years since I had my braces taken off.  My daughter was about 1 or 2 when they came off.

But they took panoramic x-rays.

And this gives me a chance to see if the ameloblastoma was growing in my jaw back then.

Since it was awhile back, they didn’t have the x-rays there, but said they’d look for them on Monday and let me know.  Meanwhile, I went by the place which took the x-rays.  There was a lady there, who I think took the original x-rays.  She told me that anything older than 2 years was film-based, since they’ve only been digital for 2 years.  And they don’t keep copies of film.  We’ll it was a nice attempt.  I had hoped to be able to take these down to UTHSCA with me.

But the ortodontist’s office called me on Monday.  They were able to find them.  My former orthodontist himself went down to the long-term storage facility to look for them and eventually found them Monday.

So now I have 3 film radiographs.  My orthodontist said he looked at them quite a while and couldn’t see anything.  Sometimes I think I can see something in my left jaw, sometimes not – probably just wishful thinking.  It wasn’t horribly obvious 4 years ago, if it was there.

Now to digitize these.  I’m not really sure how, but I’ll figure something out.

We had a long conversation about it and he gave me some more local oral surgeons I should consult with.  I still haven’t made up my mind.

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Pano Radiograph

This was the third panoramic radiograph (Xray) I had done. This one was done after the loud “pop” I heard, to make sure that I didn’t fracture my jaw. If there was a fracture, it’s only a hairline and not really evident here.

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Pano Radiograph

This was the second panoramic radiograph (Xray) I had done. Notice the radiolucency on the left side. It’s fairly visible here, with these settings. At this time, it was thought it was a cyst.

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