The American Dental Association Standards Committee on Dental Informatics has approved the following documents for circulation and comment:
• Proposed ANSI/ADA Standard No. 1094 for Quality Assurance for Digital Intra-Oral Radiographic Systems: Quality assurance can be defined as the planned and systematic activities necessary to provide adequate confidence that a product or service will meet the given requirements. As this relates to digital intraoral radiography, quality assurance entails the consistent production of X-ray images of high quality in order to provide the maximum amount of diagnostic information with minimal radiation exposure to the patient. The relationship between diagnostic information and radiation to the patient is critically important. There are essentially four components involved with any digital intraoral imaging system: the X-ray source, the digital image acquisition device (solid-state sensor or photostimulable phosphor imaging plate and scanner, and associated acquisition software), the image display device (computer, monitor and display software) and the image viewing environment. Each of these components will be addressed in this standard.
• Proposed revision of ADA Technical Report No. 1088 for Human Identification by Comparative Dental Analysis: The establishment of a positive identification of unknown human remains or an unidentified living individual by comparative dental analysis requires both the submission of supporting documentation from the dental provider(s) who treated the patient, as well as careful documentation of the unidentified remains or unidentified living individual. The goal of this technical report is to provide the best practices for comparative dental analysis recommended by the forensic odontology community for obtaining comparative forensic dental data, as well as the methodologies to reconcile that data in order to establish an identification.
The draft standard and technical report are available by calling the ADA at 1-312-440-2506 or emailing standards@ada.org. The comment deadline is Feb. 17.
The ADA is accredited by the American National Standards Institute to develop national standards for products and information technology used by the dental profession and consumers. Currently, there are more than 90 national standards, and more are under development.