Having a CT scan can assist your dentist in helping make a diagnosis so he/she can adequately treat your problem. A Cone Beam CT or CBCT scan is a Dental imaging device that combines the use of x-rays with computers to produce clear and extremely detailed 3-dimensional pictures of the body's internal structures.

Cone Beam Computed Tomography (CBCT) scanners have been available for craniofacial imaging since 1999 in Europe and more recently (2001) in the United States. The scanner uses a cone shaped x-ray beam rather than a conventional linear fan beam to provide images of the bony structures of the skull. Conventional medical scanners use a single row or a series (4, 8, 12, 32 and now 64) of solid state detectors paired with a fan shaped beam to capture the attenuated x-ray. CBCT scanners use a square 2 dimensional array of detectors to capture the cone shaped beam. As a result the medical scanner provides a set of consecutive slices of the patient while the CBCT scanner provides a volume of data. Subsequently reconstruction software is applied on the cone beam volumetric data to produce a stack of 2D gray scale level images of the anatomy.

The compact size and relatively low radiation dosage of the CBCT scanner makes it ideally suited for imaging the craniofacial region, including dental structures. With the increasing accessibility of CBCT imaging, this modality is emerging as the imaging "standard of care" for the number of diagnostic assessments of the bony components of the face.