Dental Informatics and Intra-oral Photography in Communicating with Dental Students in the Dominican Republic

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to report on the use of the smartphone camera for intra-oral photography by a group of dental students located in the Dominican Republic during the summer of 2013. We investigated the transmission of intra-oral photographs to Creighton University Dental School. We also investigated the capture and transmission of a high-definition video demonstrating a surgical procedure to the students at the remote site. The smartphone photographs were evaluated to determine if they would be useful for diagnosis and other applications in dentistry. In the absence of a standard intra-oral camera system, it was found that smartphones could be useful in capturing and transmitting digital intra-oral images that could assist in dental education and teledentistry.