Quality monitoring of soft-copy displays for medical radiography

As presentation of medical radiographic images on soft-copy displays (cathode ray tubes) becomes increasingly prevalent in electronic radiography, methods of quality assurance must be developed to ensure that radiologists can effectively transfer film-based reading skills. Luminance measurements provide the basis for evaluating the state of soft-copy displays. An integrated approach has been implemented at Mallinckrodt Institute of Radiology (MIR, Washington University, St Louis, MO) that facilitates measurement of geographically distributed soft-copy displays with centralized data logging, performance tracking, and calibration. MIR's central radiology image manager exercises the display station that drives the monitor, harvests the measurement data, stores the results, and submits the resulting data for additional processing. The luminance measurements are collected by a small, portable, photometric instrument designed at MIR that includes a serial port that is accessed via local area terminal service supported by the radiology image manager. The design details of the photometric instrument and example luminance characteristics of several soft-copy displays used at MIR are presented in this report.