The power of a photo: Seeing through the eyes of a Dentist.

I work in a very small world.  The problems that develop on teeth can be microscopic.  In order to help me in this small world I use 2.5X and 4.5X magnification along with a very bright head lamp and mirrors to look into all of the odd angles of the mouth.  Needless to say I see peoples mouths in a completely different way than they do.

It's no wonder that I am able to find many things in my patients mouth that they are unaware of.  This is one of the reasons we take a lot of photos in our office.  We consistently take 9 photos of all our new patients.  We also frequently take photos of things we find during dental surgery and photos of our finished work.

I hope the photos below help to show the difference that a patient might see compared to what I might see with my Dental loops (magnification)

A fairly normal size to look at a tooth
At this size nothing may look troubling

Now try to lean in  a little and you may notice some suspicious dark areas

Zoom in with some low power loops say 2.5X and you may notice a crack

Now lets look at it through some higher power loops say 4.5x the crack at the top of the tooth is now very apparent

Now add a little more light and this a tooth the crack at the top seems obvious.  

This is how I see the tooth as a dentist.  I look at the ridge of the tooth splitting.  I can almost see the bacteria crawling into this crack causing it to stain as the they slowly produce acid causing the tooth to decay as the crack and the bacteria continue on their way to find the nerve.  These problems usually wait to break or cause pain until you are on some cruse ship off the coast of another country.  You final bite into an almond extending the crack into the nerve and will not be able to to eat sleep or even have a cold drink the rest of the trip.  Well at I see similar situations happen fairly regularly.