And i need a practical course for assistants on feline dental radiography positioning; the maxillary fourth premolar and caudal molars are our sticking points with a size‑2 sensor, and I want to cut retakes to shorten anesthetic time for our cats. If you’ve taken a lab that truly improved full‑mouth series — using positioning blocks and bisecting-angle drills — what program delivered and how much supervised practice did they build in?
For the maxillary 4th premolar with a size‑2 sensor, what cut our retakes was turning the plate diagonally and ‘rolling the nose about 30° away’ while barely opening the mouth to clear the zygomatic arch, then adding about 10–15° more tube‑head angle than your bisecting guess. For the tiny M1, a thin foam wedge under the palatal edge makes a little ramp so the beam hits the true bisector and you don’t clip the palatal root. In very narrow cats we’ll still add a second distal‑root shot, but this clicked for us after a Viticus Group/WVC dental rad wet lab.
The lab that fixed this for us was the IVDI dental radiography positioning lab (https://ivdi.org). What cut our retakes: prop a thin foam wedge under the ipsilateral zygoma to drop the arch, place the size‑2 diagonally with the back corner just behind the last molar, then angle the beam slightly caudal‑to‑rostral (about 15–20°) to clear the zygomatic arch. If you still clip an apex, a size‑1 or a PSP plate for that one view is a handy workaround — it’s like squeezing a couch through a doorway.
@OP We sharpie “cheat angles” on the tubehead; 25° rostral oblique clears zygoma. Brachycephalics need closer to 15°.
Brett Beckman’s tech radiography lab improved our feline caudals; tiny hack: “2x2 under contralateral maxilla” for quicker anesthesia. https://veterinarydentistry.net/ce-for-technicians/.