Today, the process for capturing intra-oral digital images typically involves having to manually tell the system for which tooth or teeth an image is being captured. The system will typically prompt the user (e.g., a dentist or a technician) to tell the system which teeth are about to be imaged, based on where an intra-oral (IO) sensor has been placed in the mouth of a patient.
For example, an x-ray technician may place an intra-oral digital imaging sensor in the mouth of a patient and align an x-ray source. The technician then invokes x-ray capture using an x-ray image acquisition system. The technician is next prompted by the system for the teeth to be imaged. The technician may respond to the prompt by pressing keys or buttons, for example, on a user interface to indicate to the system which teeth are about to be imaged. Once the image is acquired, the technician may interact again with the user interface to display and orient the acquired image on a display and/or to store the image in a preferred format.
In order to take a next image of the patient, the technician is suppose to disinfect his/her hands before re-positioning the IO sensor within the mouth of the patient, since the technician touched the user interface. The process is repeated for acquiring a next image for as many images as are desired to be acquired (e.g., acquiring a full bite-wing series).
Having to manually interact with a user interface of the system between each image acquisition wastes time and calls into question whether the user is truly remaining sanitary for each acquisition (i.e., each time the user has to re-position the sensor in the patient's mouth). The user may forget to disinfect between, for example, two successive image acquisitions. Also, when the user positions the IO sensor in the mouth of the patient, the IO sensor may or may not be properly positioned to acquire an image of the desired tooth or teeth. For example, the user may think he/she is acquiring an image of teeth numbers 29-31 and manually tells the system such when, in reality, the IO sensor has been mis-positioned to acquire an image of teeth numbers 28-30.
Further limitations and disadvantages of conventional, traditional, and proposed approaches will become apparent to one of skill in the art, through comparison of such systems and methods with the present invention as set forth in the remainder of the present application with reference to the drawings.