Efficiency of low-contrast detail detectability in fluoroscopic imaging

The detectability of a static low-contrast detail in the dynamic fluoroscopic image of a homogeneous phantom was assessed by physical measurement of the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and by psychophysical measurement of the human observer detectability index d'. The two-alternative forced-choice method was used for human observer tests. The image data consisted of digitally recorded fluoroscopic image sequences which were displayed in a continuous loop of varying length (1-50 frames) at a rate of 25 frames/s. Human detection performance was seen to improve with the SNR in all cases studied: when the signal was made stronger, the image noise lower, or when the SNR in the image sequence was made higher by increasing the length of the image sequence. The results imply that the statistical efficiency of humans decreases slowly when the number of frames in the displayed loop is increased. This decrease of efficiency with loop length was not seen in all test series, however, and it is possible that the phenomenon is partly related to the high d' values found at the greatest loop lengths studied. When the display contrast was high, the statistical efficiency of the human observer was 30%-40% for both static and dynamic images. The efficiency was somewhat lower, 15%-25%, for images that were displayed with a display contrast gain setting more typical of fluoroscopy. The accumulation rate of SNR2 is a suitable quantity for the measurement of fluoroscopic image quality as related to a given static signal detection task. In contrast to this, visibility measurement by determination of the threshold contrast was seen to be unacceptably imprecise if the test is based on only one observer's opinion, as is often the case in practical quality assurance testing. The precision of the threshold contrast measurement could, however, be improved by using several observers and test objects with a smaller step between details than is usual.