Patent ID: 7311440

Claim:
A digital radiation sensor for intraoral placement in a mouth of a patient for production of radiographs of teeth and their anatomical supporting structures of bone, periodontal ligaments and gingiva around the root and cervical region of the tooth, said sensor comprising: a housing containing at least one generally planar, radiation detector providing a digital imaging surface oriented toward a radiation source, said housing conforming to the anatomic curvatures of the human maxillary and mandibular arches of an average patient; and, at least one radio-opaque fiduciary element of known shape, size and location, in a known, permanently fixed spatial position to said digital imaging surface, having a known projected image shape produced by a known angle of incidence between the radiation source and said imaging surface intermediate the radiation source and the surface of said at least one radiation detector, said at least one fiduciary element casting a projected image on said at least one radiation detector when illuminated by a radiation source for determining an unknown angle of incidence between the radiation source and said imaging surface by comparing the projected image shape of the fiduciary element against the projected image shape of the fiduciary element generated by a known angle of incidence to correct for projective distortion in the projected image shape caused by the unknown angle of incidence, said at least one digital radiation detector comprising said at least one radio-opaque fiduciary element of known shape, size and location embedded on, in or under said housing intermediate the radiation source and the surface of each of said at least one radiation detectors, said at least one fiduciary element casting a projected image on said at least one radiation detectors when illuminated by the radiation source, said at least one digital radiation detector further providing a digitized data output representing the projected image of said fiduciary element, teeth and their anatomical supporting structures of bone, periodontal ligaments and gingiva around the root and cervical region of the tooth made on said digital imaging surface of said at least one radiation detector produced by the radiation detector for use in a digital radiography imaging system that uses the projected distorted image shape of said fiduciary element onto said digital imaging surface of said radiation detector for comparison against a known non-distorted projected image shape of said fiduciary element in order to generate a corrective transformation for correcting projected distortions in the data representing the projected images on said digital imaging surface of said sensor.