Diagnostic Imaging of the Head and Neck in Carnivores

The head is a complex anatomical region and investigation of the ENT system is a very broad subject. The technological challenge facing the imager relates to the small size and shape-complexity of most head structures, and the presence of many different tissues and media, with a complex 3-D organisation. No single technology will provide all the information required by the surgeon.

Diagnostic imaging has evolved tremendously in the last two decades and imaging technologies are constantly evolving to provide improved definition, speed and ease of image acquisition. However this also implies increasing technicity and difficulty in interpretation, requiring increasing expertise.

While radiography was often the only imaging technique available to the veterinary practitioner merely 20 years ago, this modality is rarely used nowadays for ENT conditions, with the exception of dentistry. It has many drawbacks that new technologies have largely addressed, mostly superimposition of structures, poor 3-D reconstruction and the inability to differentiate soft tissues from one another or from fluids. Yet conventional radiography yields image spatial resolutions that remain miles better than most digital scanning techniques. Radiography may still have a place for some time to image dental structures and may occasionally remain useful to image the nasal cavity (intraoral radiographs to visualise details of the nasal turbinates).¹ [...]