DES1200C – Dental Radiology is a 2-credit course, roughly 30 contact hours, in Florida's Dental Assisting and Dental Hygiene curricula. It is normally taken with a separate laboratory corequisite (DES1200L) in which students expose and process images on manikins and, later, patients.
The course teaches the theory and practice of dental radiography: the physics and properties of x-radiation, the biological effects of ionizing radiation, radiation hygiene and safety for both patient and operator, exposure technique, image processing, mounting, and the identification of normal anatomical landmarks on a radiograph.
Both intraoral techniques — periapical, bitewing, and occlusal, using paralleling and bisecting-angle approaches — and extraoral techniques including panoramic imaging are covered, along with the receptor technologies now in use: film, phosphor plates, and direct digital sensors. Digital imaging receives substantial attention because it has largely displaced film, and because it changes the exposure-error picture: a digital image can look acceptable while the patient received more dose than necessary.
Quality assurance and infection control are treated as core rather than peripheral. Radiographic procedures involve placing receptors in the mouth and handling them afterward, which creates a cross-contamination pathway that must be managed deliberately.
Florida adds a specific requirement: the curriculum incorporates carpal radiograph theory as mandated by state regulation, reflecting the hand-wrist radiograph's use in skeletal age assessment.
Offered at approximately 19 Florida institutions with dental assisting or dental hygiene programs, including Broward, College of Central Florida, Daytona State, Eastern Florida State, Florida State College at Jacksonville, Florida SouthWestern, Gulf Coast State, Hillsborough, Indian River State, Miami Dade, Palm Beach State, Pensacola State, Pasco-Hernando, Santa Fe, South Florida State, State College of Florida, St. Petersburg, Tallahassee State, and Valencia.
Florida employers are overwhelmingly private dental practices, distributed statewide, along with dental service organizations, community health centers, and public health clinics.
The most consequential numbering fact in Florida dental education, and it catches students every year. The dental support prefixes carry two parallel course sets at two different levels:
The pairs are strikingly parallel: DES1200C and DES0205C are both "Dental Radiology," and DES1100C and DES0103C are both "Dental Materials." Same subject, same title, different level, different program, different credential.
Clock hours do not convert to college credit automatically. A student who completed a PSAV certificate and now wants an A.S. or a dental hygiene degree generally cannot simply transfer those courses in — the pathway usually runs through articulation agreements, an experiential credit process, or credit awarded for holding a credential such as CDA, and those provisions vary by institution and are often time-limited. SCNS equivalency applies to the same number at the same level, never across numbers, and PSAV-to-credit is precisely the boundary it does not cross. If you are moving between the two tracks, get the articulation answer in writing before you enroll.
Worth checking against your own section, because the format is heavier than the credit value suggests. Florida catalogs list this course at 3 credits with a format of 2 lecture and 3 laboratory hours weekly — roughly 75 contact hours across a 15-week term. The C suffix means lecture and laboratory are integrated into one course rather than requiring a separate lab registration.
That ratio is normal for a health-program laboratory course and is why these courses consume far more of a schedule than their credit value implies. Institutions differ — some split the same content into a lecture number plus an L laboratory number, which means two registrations — so verify the delivered hours where you are enrolling rather than assuming from the credit count.
This is the practical reason the course exists in its current form. Florida requires dental radiographers to complete board-approved training; the Florida Board of Dentistry maintains a list of approved expanded duty and radiology programs. Completing an approved course is what permits a dental assistant to expose radiographs in a Florida practice. Students should confirm that their program appears on the Board's approved list — the coursework is only useful for employment if it does.
Tallahassee State's catalog states this explicitly, and it is generally true of the DES sequence: these are career and technical courses within a dental assisting certificate or A.S., not general education. They transfer within workforce pathways rather than through the A.A. transfer pathway.
The course appears as DES1200 and DES1200C, and is normally paired with DES1200L as a laboratory corequisite. Tallahassee State lists DES1200 at 2 credits (2 hours per week) with DES1200L as corequisite and DES1020 as prerequisite. Institutions using the C designation integrate the laboratory. Compare the lecture-plus-lab total when evaluating transfer.
Prerequisites are program-sequence based — Tallahassee State requires a grade of C or better in DES1020 — and admission to the dental assisting or dental hygiene program precedes them. Programs typically also require immunizations, background screening, and CPR certification before clinical participation.
Worth understanding as a matter of professional responsibility: with film, overexposure produced a visibly dark image. A digital sensor has a wide dynamic range and will render an overexposed image that looks perfectly diagnostic, while the patient absorbed dose that produced no benefit. The exposure indicator and disciplined technique are the only routine safeguards. This mirrors the same issue in medical radiography and is why the course treats exposure selection as an ethical obligation rather than a technical preference.
Generated September 1, 2026 · Updated September 1, 2026