Optimization of the Flat Panel Display Color and Color Coding Methods for Improved Diagnostic Performance of Soft-Copy Digital Mammography

Abstract

Abstract : Mammographic films are monochrome displays with an excellent image quality, It is traditionally understood that the display of digital images in gray scale monochrome mode is the best suited for radiological imaging. Today the most color present in a radiographic film is dye (generally blue) in film base added to reduce eyestrain for the interpreting radiologist. The photopic response of the human eye is maximized for a photon wavelength of about 500 nm and decreases for higher and lower wavelengths. With the rapid development of digital image acquisition and displays systems there has arisen the possibility of creating purely color-scale radiographic images. Especially this is a very desirable for new flat-panel display technologies, such as active-matrix liquid crystal display (AM-LCD) or active-matrix organic light-emitting display. The realization of gray scale monochrome display for these technologies is not easily achievable at a low manufacturing cost. In addition, the signal acquired by a mammography flat panel detector can contain up to 12 bits of image data. It is known that the human eye cannot discern between more than 10 bits of data in a monochrome mode. Therefore, part of the information acquired by the X-ray digital detector is lost. The goal of this project was to investigate the effect of monochrome display color on the detectability of breast abnormalities, and to develop and implement color-coding schemes, available to the user on-demand that will make use of the additional image data information. We think that the color display is capable of increased dynamic range and color radiography may have a lot of potential in practical clinical applications.