Reconsideration of the horizontal tube-shifting technique in the intraoral radiography of maxillary molars.

Objective: The horizontal tube-shifting technique can be adopted to separate overlapping buccal roots of the maxillary molar from the palatal root. A simulation study was performed to determine an appropriate tube-shift angulation when adopting three-dimensional computed tomography imaging.

Methods: Cone-beam computed tomography images of 21 volunteers were used for simulation.