Image quality evaluation of small FOV and large FOV CBCT devices for oral and maxillofacial radiology

Quantitative and qualitative image quality evaluation of two different dental CBCT scanners. Two CBCT systems were evaluated in this study: one small field-of-view (FOV) (50-mm diameter) system that also allows two-dimensional (2D) dental panoramic imaging and one large FOV CBCT system (60-180-mm diameter). These devices were all tested with installed acquisition default modes and proprietary reconstruction software, enabling high-resolution bone imaging. Quantitative analyses were carried out to measure spatial resolution, linearity and homogeneity. Small-size phantoms and a human dry skull were used to evaluate intrinsic performances. Visual qualitative analyses of specific anatomical parts were blindly performed by 10 operators. Concerning spatial resolution, small-voxel size protocols provide equivalent results on the two apparatus. In terms of linearity, all systems are highly linear (0.98