History of handheld x-rays in US

First FDA approved dental handheld were designed by Aribex with the brand name of Nomad (2006). Nomad was fist criticized being unsafe for operator but many domestic and international studies proved handheld x-rays to be totally safe to operator.

Patent
Aribex has US patents for the handheld x-ray design and had multiple court battles against competing product designs. Finally a company Dexcowin Global was able to design a handheld that would not infringe Aribex patents and won the Patent Infringement case. Since then many international manufacturers have entered to US market.

Nomad later updated the original design to Pro2 model, and is still the market leader, but others like Vatech, Remedi, Woodpecker, Cocoon, Ecotron and Clarox are gaining market share due to pricing and technological benefits over Nomad Pro2.