WINDHAM, Maine — Mainely Veterinary Dentistry in Windham is believed to be the only office in the state focused solely on pets' oral health. Now, the team is celebrating another first: adding a new state-of-the-art CT scanner to their clinic.
The VetCAT Cone Beam CT scanner takes 3D X-rays and gives Dr. Jennifer Keaton a closer look at her patient's head and can help to diagnose things like jaw fractures or even cancer.
The day we visited, the machine had helped Dr. Keaton see a root tip that had been left behind in oral surgery. Something she wouldn't have been able to see catch with a traditional X-ray.
"A traditional X-ray would take us anywhere from 5 to 20 minutes depending on how big the patient is. We're only getting two-dimensional imaging and we're going through a lot of bone in that image," Dr. Keaton said. "Whereas with this, we're getting .3-millimeter slices, 600 X-rays in 20 seconds. That's a ton more data, not only on the teeth, but we can look at the nasal cavity and the ears."
The machine cost the clinic more than $250,000 and is the only one available north of Massachusetts.