A new study confirms that display luminance has a positive impact on the detectability of breast microcalcifications and spiculated lesions. The results suggest a 10% increased detectability in digital breast tomosynthesis images on a 1000 cd/m² display compared to a 500 cd/m² display.
In the article, Dr. Claudio Ferranti of the Fondazione IRCCS Istituto Nazionale dei Tumori (INT) in Milan, Italy, explains how the study was set up, its purpose, and the most significant findings. The study was performed in collaboration with Barco.
“Our patients come to us because we are renowned for our excellence in cancer diagnosis and treatment, so we need the highest-quality images on screen”
Dr. Ferranti said “We decided to start a study to evaluate displays with similar characteristics for mammography, plain chest and bone radiography, CT and nuclear medicine. We did this in collaboration with our colleagues at the Institute and with the supervision of medical physicists, in an attempt to find the displays that offer the best diagnostic performance for each subset. Our study supports the importance of display luminance: the performance of the 1000 cd/m² displays was significantly better than that of the 500 cd/m² displays in terms of AUC values and correct perception of challenging lesions (especially tiny clustered microcalcifications) in DBT images by radiologists with a different level of expertise, with higher inter-observer reproducibility”.
Analyst Comment
A paper has also been published in the February issue of Academic Radiology 2017. At SID this week, I discussed with a couple of panel makers that make mammography panels whether there was potential for the kind of ultra-high contrast panel recently seen in monitors based on the Panasonic dual-layer panel. The general view was that they would probably be too expensive. So there you have it; the needs of Hollywood movies and HDR TV justify expensive kit, but not the detection of cancer!
Barco will be showing its medical displays at the SIIM 2017 event in Pittsburgh,USA, from June 1-3. (BR)
