Digital Record Requirements
GENERAL STATEMENT OF POLICY
The ABO's position on digital records, including but
not limited to photographs, radiographic images and
study casts is that it is the examinee's responsibility
to substantiate the integrity of the records. The
overall goal of records is to accurately represent the
patient's clinical presentation at the beginning and end
of treatment. It is therefore the examinee's
responsibility to ensure that records production
practices, techniques and technologies are accurate,
unaltered, and satisfy the ABO standards. Any steps in
processing the data for purposes of clarification,
presentation, analysis or otherwise should not bias,
interfere with, and/or misrepresent the authentic anatomy
of the patient.
Examinees are reminded that all
records are legal documents and must be unaltered in
anatomical/diagnostic content.
Examinees will prepare digital
patient records using the same case report preparation
for hard copy records published on this
website.
VENDOR SOLUTIONS
Any commercial enterprise offering a product or
service intended to aid the examinee in completing the
Clinical Examination must accompany the offering with
the following statements:
This product is compatible with current standards
for submission of case reports to The American Board of
Orthodontics as published at
www.americanboardortho.com.
**
**The American Board of
Orthodontics has not reviewed or tested this product and
does not endorse, guarantee, or warrant its performance
or compatibility with ABO standards.
PRESENTATION OF DIGITAL RECORDS IN PRINTED FORM FOR IN-PERSON EXAMINATION
- For an in-person examination, the examinee will bring digital patient records in
printed form. Insert printed pages into the case
report notebook according to assembly
instructions.
- Photographs and radiographs will be printed on
photo glossy paper, with an ABO record identification
label affixed to each page.
- Tracings and composite tracings will be printed on
transparent media with an ABO record identification label
affixed to each page.
- Note: Be sure that you have printed the tracings
at the same scale as the untraced lateral
cephalometric radiographs. You should be able to overlay the
tracing on top of the printed untraced lateral
cephalometric radiograph to produce a perfect match.
DIGITAL CASTS
- Digital pretreatment casts are
acceptable provided that the digital format is supported by software to view and measure the digital casts
for Discrepancy Index (DI) in compliance with ABO case submission criteria.
- Digital interim casts are acceptable only between Phase 1 and Phase 2 treatment provided all appliances are removed prior to impression taking.
- For the upcoming clinical exam, the ABO is prepared to accept pretreatment and allowable interim digital casts in the following formats: OrthoCAD Vers 3.0047 and GeoDigm emodel. OrthoCAD may be downloaded from Cadent's website and self-scored for DI. Contact GeoDigm directly to request a scoring for DI.
- Save allowable pretreatment and interim digital casts to a single USB thumb drive marked with your ABO ID#. Identify each digital cast with a distinguishing filename (e.g. case number, patient name and stage of treatment).
- NOTE: An accurate and stable occlusal registration (maximum intercuspation) for all digital casts is best achieved by using polyvinylsiloxane (PVS) bite registration material.
- Digital interim casts are not acceptable for pre-surgical study casts.
- Post-treatment digital casts are not acceptable at the current time.
- Note: The Board requires that final casts be a direct plaster/stone reproduction of the occlusal result, trimmed to ABO specifications, and/or mounted in centric relation, after intraoral impressions are produced. Stereolithic or other reconstructed casts created from computer generated images are unacceptable.
- ABO Directors are actively pursuing the
implementation of an automatic scoring system for all digital casts.