Image searches

CaptureDent™ lets you conduct two kinds of search for images:

• Find all images for the currently active patient that meet your criteria for appointment date, mouth region, et cetera. This is a single-patient image search.
• Find all images that meet your criteria, considering photos for all patients. This is known as a “multi-patient image search.”

Both kinds of searches are done from the “Review” page (since that is where you’ll be viewing the results). You specify the search criteria using the “Image search” dialog box.

Single-patient image search

The simpler case is the single-patient image search. To perform this operation, first be sure the patient whose records you want to search is selected as the active patient. If you haven’t done this, go to the “Patients” page and select him or her.

Next, visit the “Review” page. In the toolbar along the left side of the CaptureDent window, you’ll see a button with a magnifying glass icon. This is the “Search for images” button.

When you click the button, the Image search dialog box will appear.

You can search by any single criterion or any combination of criteria. If you select more than one, only those records matching all criteria will be shown in your search results.

To perform a single-image search, be sure the radio button labelled “for the current patient only” is selected (instead of the “for all patients” radio button).

Once you’re satisfied with your search criteria, click the image search dialog’s “OK” button to begin looking for matching images.

The thumbnail display will be emptied, and the mouse cursor will turn into an hourglass while the search is in progress. As CaptureDent finds image records that match your criteria, it will display a thumbnail for each in the main area of the page.

When the search is done, the mouse cursor will turn back into its normal shape and you’ll be able to review the results. You may select, print, and perform all the usual actions on the images displayed in the array of thumbnails.

Because this is a single-patient image search, there’s no need to show the Patient ID code on each thumb, so the full date and time each image was taken will be displayed instead.

Multiple-patient image searches

To search for more than one patient, the procedure is exactly the same as the above, except in the image search dialog box you’ll actuate the radio button labelled “for all patients” instead of the “for the current patient only” radio button.

In this case, when you click the dialog box’s “OK” button CaptureDent will search for matching records not just for the active patient but for all patients.

As in a single-patient image search, a thumbnail will appear for each image found that matches your criteria. However, because more than one patient’s images might appear, each thumbnail will display the Patient ID code for the patient whose photograph it is instead of the time the photo was taken.

Once your results have appeared, there’s no significant difference between this and a single-patient image search. You may do all the same things — display, print, or edit the search results — that you would with the results of a single-patient image search.