X-ray vision

At the Westchester Center for Periodontal and Laser Therapy in Scarsdale, Dr. Robert Horowitz enthused last week over the new high-tech equipment recently installed in his dental office. Produced and marketed by AFP Imaging Corp. in Elmsford, the NewTom Vertical Generation (VG) Cone Beam Computed Tomography (CBCT) represents the state of the art in X-ray machines for specialty practices such as his. Dr. Horowitz in late November was the first dentist in North America to begin using one.

“It is spectacular from a number of standpoints,” he said. Most important, he said, is its limited radiation to which patients are exposed ”“ the lowest in the digital radiography industry, according to researchers reporting in a British Institute of Radiology journal. The new system also provides more accurate, higher-quality scans for his periodontal and dental implant patients. And the office machine gives him more “control,” he said, as he no longer must send patients to a diagnostic imaging center for CT scans. “That little convenience makes it a lot easier for them and takes a lot of the stress out of what they do” in the course of treatment, he said.

The new in-house machine? “I love it,” Dr. Horowitz declared.

“It”™s the coolest thing in dentistry right now,” said Michael Ellison, senior product manager at AFP Imaging Corp., at the start of his Power Point presentation at company headquarters. He was speaking of the trademarked NewTom VG, whose proprietary software and technology could make diagnosis more accurate and less risky for practitioners, treatment safer and more convenient for patients and business more profitable for AFP and its stockholders.

The computer-generated X-ray images on the screen told a detailed three-dimensional story not yet commonly seen in dentists”™ offices ”“ of jawbones and mandibular canals where cysts and lesions might lurk and nerves can be damaged by too-deep drilling, both hard and soft tissue in clear definition, volumetric reconstructions of entire skulls that can be rotated and viewed from multiple angles. AFP executives aim to make their “coolest thing” a mass-market standard in dental and ear, nose and throat specialties that drives the publicly traded company”™s global growth and accelerates the transition from AFP”™s ”™70s roots in X-ray film processing to three-dimensional, low-radiation head scanners.

Headquartered at 250 Clearbrook Road in the Cross Westchester Executive Park, AFP last fall began marketing its latest product. The spatially economical machine, under which patients stand or sit, uses the same three-dimensional imaging technology as the company”™s NewTom 3G scanner, a horizontal table unit that came on the market about three years ago. Both products were developed and are manufactured by AFP”™s wholly owned subsidiary in Verona, Italy, Quantitative Radiology s.r.l.