Digital Dental Dis-Ease Detection

I had a great time blowing, sucking, and squirting today. It was my little lambs very first dentist appointment, and to help him feel more comfortable we got to play with the dentists tool. I mean tools. Dental tools. Ehm, anyway. We have a friend visiting from Maui this week, who told the Colonel who told me about how his Hawaiian dentist now uses digital imaging instead of x-rays. Since this friend of ours drinks cheap crappy beer, I decided to check it out for myself.

Instead of putting those uncomfortable cardboard things in your mouth to get an x-ray, you can get an uncomfortable sensor thing crammed in. The sensor is connected to a wire that is connected to a computer. When the x-ray beam is sent through your teeth, the image shows up on the computer screen. Since this system is more sensitive than the film version, supposedly your x-ray exposure is cut by about 90%. Another bonus is that it helps save the environment by not using polluting photo chemicals needed to process the x-ray film. And it's supposed to be quicker and cheaper, so make extra sure your dental bill reflects this.

My usual cynical, sarcastic, Photoshop educated self had the immediate thought of digital manipulation and expensive snow jobs. You see that big white spot? This is some serious scary sounding dental shit and we need to do some costly preventative procedures as soon as possible. When do you get your next paycheck? Of course this was all confirmed as I kept reading. Here it is, copied and pasted directly (and creatively) from Learndigital dot net:

The advantages of producing and using digital images in the dental practice are well established. The principle advantage is that of “feature extraction”. Altering the initial images actually is necessary and desirable for improving "disease detection". The current medically accepted terminology for this task is “feature extraction.”

I'd call it "bullshit extraction" or "paycheck extraction". But even so, I like the idea of digital x-rays. Just keep your cynical side sunny and tell your dentist (with your new beautiful smile) where you learned all about "feature extraction".