35-mm film scanner as an intraoral dental radiograph digitizer. I: A quantitative evaluation.

A 35-mm slide scanner digital imaging system was tested for its suitability in digitizing intraoral dental radiographic film for quantitative studies. The system (Nikon model LS-3510AF Nikon Electronic Imaging, Nikon, Inc., Melville, N.Y.) uses a charge-coupled device linear photodiode array. The data content in the original film images was evaluated, and the system performance assessed objectively with the use of specially designed test films. Radiometric and geometric performances for the digitizing system were extracted from measurements and observations, and these were compared with published data for two other film digitizing systems (video camera DAGE MTI, Michigan City, Ind. and Barneyscan 35-mm film digitizer Barneyscan, Berkeley, Calif.). The techniques used to evaluate this system are easy and suitable for evaluation of any digitizing system. This scanner system (Nikon) was superior to previously evaluated systems in transforming and recording radiographic film densities across the range (0.3 to 2.0 optical density units) of clinically relevant optical densities. The scanner offers substantial advantage over the other digitizing systems for gray scale information from clinically important optical densities.