How much does an oral and maxillofacial radiologist make?
There is no short official answer: the federal wage series that tracks dentists skips the specialty, so the federal data publishes no oral radiologist salary.
The closest federal figure is the median for the catch-all group "dentists, all other specialists" — $224,990 in May 2025 — and it pools several specialties.
What pay actually looks like depends on the arrangement: salaried or per-read, on site or remote.
What oral radiologists make nationally
Start with what does not exist: the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics has no wage series for oral and maxillofacial radiologists.
BLS publishes separate dentist occupations only for general dentists, oral and maxillofacial surgeons, orthodontists and prosthodontists — every other dental specialty falls into the residual code "Dentists, all other specialists" (SOC 29-1029), which O*NET defines as all dentists not listed separately.
Any "oral radiologist salary" attributed to federal data is that category wearing the specialty's name.
The category's median annual wage was $224,990 in May 2025.
Use it as context, never as a quote for the specialty: the group covers endodontists, periodontists, pediatric dentists, oral pathologists and the other specialties without a series of their own, so nothing in the figure isolates oral radiology.
For orientation, here is how the category sits in the same May 2025 table next to the specialties BLS does track:
| Dentist occupation (BLS, May 2025) | Median annual wage |
|---|---|
| Oral and maxillofacial surgeons | $352,220 |
| Prosthodontists | $311,180 |
| Orthodontists | $289,140 |
| Dentists, all other specialists (includes oral radiology) | $224,990 |
| Dentists, general | $170,950 |
Source: BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook, May 2025 medians. Only the fourth row is the category that includes oral radiology.
Two reading notes before quoting any of it.
Coverage: BLS's OEWS wage estimates leave out the self-employed and the owners and partners of unincorporated firms, so a radiologist in either arrangement does not appear in figures like these.
Specificity: the grouped median blends the pay of every specialty that lacks its own series, and BLS publishes no figure that isolates any one of them — which is why the honest label is proxy.
Which dental specialty pays the most explains the grouping and ranks the specialties BLS tracks side by side.
A category median, not an oral radiologist salary
Per-read vs salaried: how oral radiologists are paid
Because the specialty's product is the interpretation, the pay question comes down to how a read — or a radiologist's time — is compensated.
ADA guidance for employed dentists describes two pay shapes across dentistry: a flat salary or hourly rate on one side, and pay based on a percentage of production and/or collections on the other, with the production-linked form the more common of the two.
A per-read contract applies that production logic to imaging: the interpreted study is the unit of work, and the pay is set per study read.
How much per read?
Our research found no benchmark.
No tier-1 or tier-2 source we checked — federal wage data, dental workforce surveys, specialty-association reports — publishes per-scan or per-read fees for remote CBCT interpretation, so we have no rate to quote as a market or to check an offer against.
Treat any specific figure quoted online as one contract's terms, not a market.
That gap makes the volume assumptions the real negotiation.
A per-read number only means something next to the terms that produce it: how many studies a month the arrangement assumes, whether that count is committed or floats with the referring practices' caseloads, what the turnaround expectation is, and whether a minimum payment applies in slow months.
A salary trades that variability for a fixed figure.
The question is not which structure pays more in the abstract — our research found no published rates to compare — but which variability you are positioned to carry.
Remote reading runs on store-and-forward mechanics — the practice acquires and exports the scan, and the radiologist interprets it at a distant site and returns a report — which is where a per-read structure attaches to the work unit by unit.
The oral radiologist career guide walks through how that arrangement works day to day.
The legal frame around it is state law.
South Carolina's teledentistry law (2026 Act No. 210, effective May 19, 2026) counts asynchronous, store-and-forward transmission of a patient's dental information to a licensee at a distant site among teledentistry's forms, and, before providing teledentistry services, requires a provider to confirm — and document — that the patient is located in a jurisdiction where the provider is licensed or otherwise authorized to practice.
Read closely, the statute is written around care delivered to a patient; how a state applies it to a read rendered for a referring dentist is not spelled out in the law itself.
And beyond South Carolina, our research found no multi-state source settling how states treat cross-border reads — put the question to each state dental board involved before pricing or accepting remote work.
Remote-read rules are state law
Oral radiologist pay by state: what the data shows
Don't expect a state table: BLS has no series for oral and maxillofacial radiologists at the national level, so it publishes no specialty-level state figures either, and our research found no other source that breaks the specialty's pay out by state.
The honest benchmark for any location is the national category figure in the table above, read with the caveats attached to it.
What does vary by state for this specialty is less about wage tables and more about the market itself.
ADA's Health Policy Institute counted 225 professionally active dentists holding an oral and maxillofacial radiology certificate or degree in 2025, up from 190 in 2022 — a count of credential-holders, so a dentist holding two specialty credentials appears under both.
The pipeline behind them: 8 accredited programs and 17 graduates in 2025.
A pool this small means practices in different states may well be drawing on the same few readers.
For a practice doing that — the search, the contract structures and the credential checks are covered in hiring an oral radiologist — the practical takeaway is to benchmark against the national proxy, weight the scarcity, and treat any state-specific pay expectation as something to test against actual arrangements in that market.
For a radiologist weighing locations, the same logic runs in reverse: the state that matters most may be the one whose board clears your remote-reading arrangement, not the one with a headline wage figure.
Does board certification change oral radiologist pay?
Start with what board certification is in this specialty.
The National Commission on Recognition of Dental Specialties and Certifying Boards recognizes 11 national specialty certifying boards and accepts no more than one board per specialty.
Oral and maxillofacial radiology is the gap in that list — none of the 11 certifies the specialty, so there is no National Commission-recognized, board-certified credential in oral radiology, and anyone describing themselves as board-certified in the specialty today is not describing a recognized certification.
That may change.
ADA News reported on September 30, 2026 that the American Certifying Board of Oral and Maxillofacial Radiology had applied to be recognized as the specialty's national certifying board, with public comments due by 5 p.m. CST on November 13, 2026.
If a recognition decision lands, it is worth revisiting what the credential adds to a radiologist's standing — and to their pay conversation.
Until then, the substantive markers in play in this specialty are the state dental license and the accredited residency: CODA requires an oral and maxillofacial radiology program to run at least 24 months full-time or its equivalent — an accreditation floor, not a standard length — and the average accredited program ran 28.7 months in the 2025-26 survey year.