About the Oral Imaging Centre

This centre dates back from 1997. It coordinates clinical, educational and research activities related to oral imaging. The OIC is an associated partner of the Medical Imaging Research Group. It has a unique multidisciplinary nature, strengthened by its international aspiration (collaborations with over 40 different research groups worldwide). The OIC consists of 12 PhD researchers and 2 postdoctoral researchers. In the past decade the centre produced 8 PhD and 25 MSc theses.

From the early days, European cooperation was sought at the academic as well as industrial level. The European Dentomaxillary Imaging Network (EDMIN) was founded and in 1998, the Centre succeeded in coordinating a EURATOM project, Minosquare, (ftp://ftp.cordis.europa.eu/pub/fp5-euratom/docs/protection_radiation_minosquare.pdf) related to optimization of new dentomaxillofacial imaging modalities. It also participated in another 3 European projects (PISA, OSTEODENT and SedentexCT)

The centre was a pioneer to validate and optimize a prototype of spiral tomography, to develop a dental prototype for ADC Solo (Agfa, digital phosphor plate system) and to validate and optimize a preclinical unit of Cone Beam Computed Tomography (CBCT) for dental applications. It is currently one of the key-expert centres related to CBCT research.

This all resulted in a productive publications list (> 160 peer-reviewed international).

The centre organizes the undergraduate education in oral imaging. Besides it offers postgraduate education by actively participating in the education and research guidance of students registered for the postgraduate master of Science in advanced medical imaging.

The OIC offers an ideal link to clinical practice as, annually, about 50.000 two-dimensional radiographic images are acquired and about 1.500 three-dimensional ones.