Setting liquid crystal displays (LCDs) to higher maximum luminance levels may actually hurt their diagnostic capabilities, according to research from Duke University in Durham, NC.
Setting liquid crystal displays (LCDs) to higher maximum luminance levels may actually hurt their diagnostic capabilities, according to research from Duke University in Durham, NC.
"Calibration of the display to a higher maximum luminance may deteriorate the detection performance,” said Amarpreet Chawla of Duke. He presented the research at the 2005 RSNA meeting in Chicago.
Brighter displays can produce significant glare, leading to eye strain and fatigue. To compare human observer performance on an LCD at different adaptation levels of the eye and at two different maximum luminance settings, the research team performed a psychophysical study.
The researchers used a three-megapixel G31-S monochrome LCD (Eizo Nanao Technologies, Ishikawa, Japan), which was DICOM-calibrated to two maximum luminance settings (450 cd/m2and 600 cd/m2). At each maximum luminance setting, eight observers were compared in their ability to detect 288 objects, which consisted of low-contrast periodic and aperiodic patterns.
The periodic patterns closely resembled the standard target used by the DICOM committee, Chawla said. In order to simulate a clinical environment where there’s a local variation in the adaptation level of a radiologist’s eye when viewing a typical image, the objects were embedded in different surroundings.
Images were 11-bit, 1536 x 2048 in size. The researchers, which included employees of Eizo Nanao, developed software for displaying the images and recording the observer responses.
The researchers found that there were negligible differences in observer performance between the two calibration settings when viewing objects of different contrasts embedded over the same surrounding level. These differences even less noticeable when the objects were brighter than the luminance level of the eye adaptation or when the adaptation level was much higher, according to the researchers.
At a higher level of eye adaptation, the observer performance sharply deteriorated when the maximum luminance setting was increased from 450 cd/m2 to 600 cd/m2, according to the researchers.
“Although the display was DICOM calibrated, performance depended on the adaptation state of the eye,” he said.
By Erik L. Ridley
AuntMinnie.com staff writer
February 27, 2006
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