Patient and Camera Positions

Patient Posi­tion

I think what sort of inspired me to start this thread was observ­ing a den­tal assis­tant at an in-office CEREC train­ing tak­ing a pic­ture of #3, then #30.  She more or less started at the foot of the chair and con­torted her­self and tried to get both shots from that posi­tion with a point and shoot cam­era.  The pic­tures turned out OK, but more or  less were on par with an IOC.  The occlusal tables were not in view, and after crop­ping out stuff, maybe only 3 teeth were view­able in the sex­tant image.  I noticed the same thing when I went to train my staff, so lets go over where to stand and at what angle to put the patient.

The best way to think about where to stand when tak­ing a shot is to think about the head­rest as a clock.  With the foot of the chair being the 12 oclock pois­tion, the patient’s right is 3 O’clock, the top of the patient’s head is 6 O’clock, and the patient’s left is 9 O’clock.

Chair Posi­tion:

I more or less only have two chair posi­tions.  45 degrees for low­ers and flat or uppers:

When tak­ing either an upper sex­tant shot or occlusal, I lay the patient flat and raise them as high as the chair goes.

On the low­ers I put the patient at a 45 degree angle and lower the chair so that the patients head is about level to my waist.

Con­tinue with Quad­rant and Occlusal Intra­o­ral Pictures