A digital radiographic artifact: A clinical report.

Digital dental radiographic imaging is considered to be as diagnostically accurate as conventional film-based radiography. In addition, many digital radiographic systems offer various image enhancements that may aid in image interpretation. However, neither type of radiographic imaging technique perfectly correlates radiographic diagnoses with clinical findings. Moreover, visual digital enhancements may provide information that is diagnostically misleading. This report presents a completed patient treatment evaluation with both enhanced and unenhanced digital radiography. The outcome suggests that clinicians should be careful with the interpretation of digital radiographic images, as this can potentially result in false-positive diagnoses. Copyright 2010 The Editorial Council of the Journal of Prosthetic Dentistry. Published by Mosby, Inc. All rights reserved.