X-ray is the everyday word for a picture that shows what a mirror and a bright light cannot.

In kid words

An X-ray is a special picture that shows your dentist the parts of a tooth that hide under the surface, like the root and the bone around it.

It only takes a moment to take one. We only take a picture like this when we actually need to see something a regular look in your mouth cannot show us.

The parent version

X-ray, sometimes called a radiograph in more formal or clinical language, is the general term for an image that shows structures beneath the surface of a tooth and the bone around it, things no amount of light or a mirror alone can reveal. There are several specific types built for different questions, a bitewing being one common example, each one framed to answer something particular rather than to show everything at once.

Dental X-rays are one tool among several a dentist may reach for, and mainstream pediatric dentistry treats them as something used for a specific reason, not a routine formality. Ask your pediatric dentist what any particular image is meant to answer before it is taken.

Where you might hear it at our office

At our office, digital X-rays are taken only as needed, never as an automatic step tacked onto a routine visit. Growth checks at routine visits already cover most of what a parent wonders about, and an image only enters the conversation when the exam itself raises a specific question, like a tooth arriving late or two back teeth sitting close enough to hide what is between them.

That policy is part of the bigger picture on our preventative care page. Other unfamiliar words are collected in the rest of the dictionary.

Related words

Bitewing. Radiograph. Enamel.