Examining dental radiographs

What are some key factors for examining dental radiographs? Naomi Hoyer, DVM, DAVDC, an associate professor of dentistry and oral surgery at Colorado State University in Fort Collins, addressed how to interpret canine dental radiographs, in a continuing education (CE) session at the 2026 Veterinary Meeting & Expo (VMX) in Orlando, Florida. Hoyer also co-presented a masterclass on how to professionally interpret dental radiographs, alongside Benita Altier, LVT, VTS (Dentistry), owner of Pawsitive Dental Education, as well as several more CE sessions that focused on veterinary dentistry.

In an interview with dvm360 at VMX, Hoyer discussed her presentation on dental radiographs and her other CE session topics. In this video, she provides her “checklist” of what to look for when examining dental radiographs to help identify a patient’s condition.

The following is a transcript of the video, lightly edited for clarity:

Naomi Hoyer, DVM, DAVDC: I think, always the thing to think of when you're looking at dental radiographs, No. 1 is, ‘is it diagnostic?’ Are you seeing the teeth that you need to see in the image? Is the image too distorted to be able to evaluate? Is it too dark? Is it too light? Has the computer program done something to make it so it's oriented incorrectly? So that's always question one.

Then the next thing that I recommend thinking about is, ‘are all of the teeth that you expect to be there present?’ So, [that’s] question 2. Question 3: Is the tooth normal? Question 4: Is the bone normal?

And then anything else you see on the radiograph. I think it's nice to have just a short little checklist to walk yourself through every time you look at a radiograph, and that's the one I recommend.

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