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Introduction: Panoramic images are an important part of a patient’s dental and orthodontic record. They provide broad coverage and are a valuable screening tool for potential abnormalities and normal dental development. Dental students learn much about panoramic image anatomy during dental school but are not usually taught a systematic method of image interpretation. The use of an eye-tracker will allow visualization and statistical analysis of interpretation method to find differences between newer and experienced clinicians. Information gathered can be used to recommend an interpretation method to newer clinicians as they begin their dental career. Methods and Materials: Two groups of clinicians were created: ten clinicians with more than five years clinical experience (experienced clinicians) and ten clinicians with five years or less experience (newer clinicians). Five panoramic images, three which contained no significant findings and two which had significant findings, were used in the study. An eye-tracker and the eye-tracking software were used to record and evaluate the interpretation methods to find differences between the groups. Results: Newer clinician’s interpretation path entered more areas of pathology or abnormality in portions of the image other than the dentition. Areas of abnormality or pathology within the dentition were entered equally by the interpretations paths of both groups. Newer clinicians had longer interpretation times and their interpretations included more fixation points and covered more image area. Experienced clinicians were quicker with interpretation and showed more of an interpretation pattern. Conclusions: Newer clinicians are more complete (interpret the entire image), have more fixation points and spend longer time interpreting. Newer clinicians often had no pattern to interpretation, but had interpretation paths which entered areas of pathology or abnormality due to completeness of interpretation. Experienced clinicians showed much more pattern (systematic approach) to interpretation, but were less complete. In both groups, interpretations times were significantly longer when the entire image was interpreted.

This research will look at a printing operation that prints labels for paint cans. This particular printing operation is a multi-product, single-machine system with stochastic demands that uses a printing press to print the labels on large sheets that may contain one label type (dedicated sheets) or many different label types (mixed sheets). The objective of this thesis is to determine whether to set up the press to print mixed sheets or dedicated sheets in order to minimize the total cost of the current system given three scenarios: one where all label types have approximately the same monthly demand, one where 20% of the label types have very large demand and the remaining 80% have small demand, and one where half of the label types have moderately high demand and the other half have moderately low demand. Three simulation models, one for each scenario, are developed to test this objective and to see which scenarios prefer mixed sheets and which prefer dedicated sheets. The decision logic to choose the sheet to print is based on summing the differences of the inventory levels and the reorder points for each label type on the sheet, and choosing the sheet with the minimum value of this equation. The results of the simulations show that, according to this decision logic, all scenarios choose dedicated to print dedicated sheets.