Can You Wear Dentures in an MRI?

Most standard removable dentures made from acrylic resin contain no metal and can stay in your mouth during an MRI without posing a safety risk. The situation gets more complicated when dentures include metallic components, particularly magnetic attachments used to hold overdentures in place over implants. The material inside your denture, not just the fact that it is a denture, determines whether it is safe, whether it will distort the images, and whether you will be asked to take it out.

Why MRI Scanners Care About What Is in Your Mouth

An MRI scanner uses a powerful static magnetic field, rapidly switching gradient fields, and radiofrequency energy to produce images. Any object you bring into that environment interacts with those forces to varying degrees. For dental materials, the three concerns are magnetic force pulling on or twisting the object, heat generated by radiofrequency energy, and distortion of the images the scanner is trying to produce. A plain acrylic denture with no metal parts has essentially zero interaction with any of these forces. It sits in the scanner the same way a plastic button on your shirt would. The problems begin when metal enters the picture.

Research measuring how dental appliances behave inside a 3-tesla scanner found that displacement force spikes as objects approach the gantry entrance, peaking in the first few centimeters inside the bore. At a distance of just 25 centimeters outside the gantry, all tested single fixed and removable dental appliances showed displacement forces below 0.03 newtons, which is negligible.

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The force climbs once the appliance is deep inside the bore, and how much it climbs depends entirely on the magnetic properties of whatever metal is present.

Which Denture Materials Are Safe

Dentures come in a wide range of material combinations, and each behaves differently in the MRI environment. Here is a practical breakdown of what the research shows:

• Acrylic resin (no metal): Completely non-magnetic and non-conductive. A full acrylic denture generates no force, no heating, and no image artifact. There is no safety reason to remove it.
• Titanium and titanium alloys: Titanium is only weakly paramagnetic. Imaging has been found to be possible even at very close distances from titanium-based dental devices, and temperature increases remain minor.
• Precious alloys and amalgam: Gold and dental amalgam produce no measurable imaging artifacts and generate minimal force or heating.
• Cobalt-chromium and nickel-chromium: These base-metal alloys are commonly used in partial denture frameworks. Studies have concluded that patients with fixed or removable prostheses made from cobalt-chromium or nickel-chromium can safely undergo MRI at up to 3 tesla. Artifacts from these materials are present but have been judged “still acceptable” for most diagnostic purposes outside the immediate jaw area.
• Stainless steel: This is where problems escalate. Stainless steel clasps or reinforcements in dentures are ferromagnetic enough to produce extensive artifacts in the facial region and raise real displacement concerns.

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If you are unsure what your denture is made from, your dentist can tell you. The lab that fabricated the prosthesis keeps a record of the alloys used. For older dentures where records might not exist, a strong refrigerator magnet can give you a crude screening test at home: if it sticks, tell the MRI facility before your appointment.

Magnetic Attachments Are a Separate Problem

Some overdentures snap onto dental implants using small magnetic attachments rather than clips or ball-type connectors. These magnets, often called “keepers” or “magnetic retainers,” use rare-earth or ferromagnetic alloys specifically designed to produce a strong attractive force. That same property makes them behave aggressively inside an MRI bore.

Testing of multiple sizes of magnetic keeper attachments at 3 tesla found that every single one produced a deflection angle exceeding 45 degrees, the threshold the American Society for Testing and Materials uses to flag a device as potentially unsafe.

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In some configurations the deflection angle exceeded 90 degrees, meaning the magnet was pulling so hard toward the scanner bore that it would have ripped free of any weak retention.

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The practical risk here depends on whether the magnet is embedded in a removable denture or fixed to an implant. If it is in a removable overdenture, the denture could physically fly off your palate and toward the scanner magnet, potentially injuring you or damaging the equipment. If the magnetic keeper is screwed onto an implant that is osseointegrated into your jawbone, it cannot fly away, but the twisting force (torque) could theoretically stress the implant-bone interface. The cast magnetic alloy coping tested in one study showed the greatest deflection force at 0.33 newtons during 3-tesla MRI.

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The bottom line for magnetic-attachment dentures is straightforward: always remove the denture before entering the MRI room. If your denture uses magnets and the magnets themselves are fixed to implants and cannot be removed, you need to inform the MRI team so they can assess whether scanning is safe at the field strength they plan to use.

How Much Heat Does an MRI Generate in Dental Metal

The radiofrequency pulses that an MRI scanner sends into your body to generate images can induce small electrical currents in any conductive material, which then converts to heat. For most dental prostheses made from standard casting alloys, this heating is minor. In a 3-tesla scanner operating in normal mode, the highest measured temperature increase in dental bridges was about 1.8 degrees Celsius, and in full-arch fixed prostheses it was about 1.6 degrees Celsius.

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Magnetic keeper-and-coping assemblies heated up to roughly 1.4 degrees Celsius in a 3-tesla environment, and in a different scanner brand, stayed below 1.0 degree Celsius across all measurement points.

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Even at 7 tesla, an ultra-high-field strength used mostly in research settings, full metal crowns showed temperature increases below 1 degree Celsius. The one exception was a 50-millimeter-length dental implant, which reached up to 1.5 degrees Celsius on sequences with high radiofrequency energy deposition.

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To put these numbers in perspective, a temperature bump of one or two degrees Celsius inside the mouth is comparable to sipping a warm drink. The oral mucosa has robust blood supply that dissipates heat quickly. Researchers have generally concluded that radiofrequency heating from dental casting materials at standard clinical field strengths does not pose a meaningful burn risk. The notable exception is orthodontic wire, which can exceed industrial safety standards for heating because of its long, thin geometry. The same research team that measured bridge and prosthesis heating recommended removing orthodontic wire or placing a spacer between the appliance and the oral mucosa before scanning.

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How Denture Materials Distort MRI Images

Even when a metallic object is perfectly safe to bring into the scanner, it can still ruin the images. Metals distort the local magnetic field around them, creating dark voids, bright flares, and geometric warping known as artifacts. These artifacts can obscure the structures a radiologist needs to see.

Early research established that dental amalgam and 14-karat gold produce no imaging artifacts, while stainless steel in dentures and orthodontic braces produces extensive artifacts throughout the facial region.

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Later work confirmed that for common dental alloys like cobalt-chromium and nickel-chromium, artifacts have limited clinical importance when the scan target is the neck or brain, but become significant when the scan is focused on the jaw, temporomandibular joint, or other orofacial structures.

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This distinction matters. If you are getting a brain MRI for headaches or a cervical spine MRI for neck pain, the metal in a partial denture a few inches away will likely not affect diagnostic quality. But if you need an MRI of your jaw joint, salivary glands, or floor of the mouth, even a small amount of cobalt-chromium framework in a partial denture can degrade the images enough to be a problem. In that case, removing the denture before scanning eliminates the artifact entirely if the metal is all in the removable prosthesis.

An overlooked source of artifact is not the denture itself but residual metallic particles left behind from dental procedures. Research on temporomandibular joint MRI found that tiny metal shavings from surgical bone burs or files used during condylar surgery can produce artifacts on postoperative images, even when no visible metallic object is present.

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Techniques That Reduce Metal Artifacts

When a metallic dental device cannot be removed, like a fixed bridge, an implant, or a cemented crown, radiologists have several technical tools to minimize the damage to image quality. A systematic review of the artifact literature identified a handful of strategies with good evidence behind them.

The simplest approach is using a lower field strength. Artifacts are consistently larger at 3 tesla than at 1.5 tesla, so if the clinical question can be answered at the lower field, that alone reduces the problem.

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Beyond field strength, the choice of pulse sequence matters enormously. Turbo-spin-echo sequences produce the smallest artifacts among conventional approaches and are often the default for scanning near dental metal.

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For more aggressive artifact suppression, specialized sequences have been developed. Slice encoding for metal artifact correction (SEMAC) corrects distortions that occur between imaging slices and is particularly effective for strongly magnetic materials, reducing slice distortion by over 90 percent compared to standard turbo-spin-echo in one head-and-neck study.

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The trade-off is that SEMAC adds scan time. Another technique, view angle tilting (VAT) and its derivatives, corrects distortions within each imaging slice and has been shown to cut artifact volume by roughly 56 to 70 percent depending on the implementation, though it can introduce some image blurring.

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These are not options you need to request yourself. The MRI technologist and radiologist choose the appropriate sequences based on what they know about the metal in or near the scan field. Your job is to give them accurate information so they can plan accordingly.

What to Do Before Your Appointment

Every MRI facility will ask you to complete a screening questionnaire before your scan. That questionnaire asks about implants, prostheses, and metallic objects anywhere in your body. Here is how to handle the denture question efficiently:

• Plain acrylic dentures: Mention them on the form but expect to be told they are fine to leave in. Some facilities ask you to remove all removable prostheses as a blanket policy regardless of material, simply because it is easier than evaluating each case. That is an administrative choice, not a safety requirement.
• Partial dentures with metal frameworks: Tell the technologist what alloy the framework is. If you do not know, err on the side of removing it, especially if the scan is anywhere near your head or face.
• Overdentures with magnetic attachments: Always remove the denture. Alert the team that magnetic keepers may still be attached to your implants inside your jaw.
• Implant-supported dentures without magnets: Titanium implants are generally MRI-compatible. Mention them, but they rarely require cancellation or modification of the scan.

If you are anxious about removing your denture in a clinical setting, know that you can step into a private changing area. The technologist will not rush you into the scanner. MRI appointments already build in time for screening and setup, so taking a moment to remove and store your denture is expected.

When Dentures Actually Need an MRI

There is an ironic scenario where dentures and MRI intersect from the other direction. Swallowed or aspirated dentures are a known medical emergency, and acrylic dentures present a particular challenge because they are radiolucent, meaning they do not show up on standard X-rays. In cases where a plain radiograph fails to locate a missing denture, a CT scan or MRI may be needed to determine its position.

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This comes up more often than you might expect, particularly with elderly patients who fall asleep wearing their dentures or who undergo emergency intubation. The very property that makes acrylic dentures invisible to the MRI’s magnetic field also makes them invisible to conventional X-rays. CT is the more common choice in emergency settings because it is faster and more widely available, but MRI remains an option when radiation exposure is a concern or CT results are inconclusive. It is a useful reminder that acrylic’s lack of interaction with magnetic fields cuts both ways: completely safe in the scanner, completely invisible to the scanner.