A practical approach to soft-copy display consistency for PC-based review workstations.

The use of non-permanent, digital image display, i.e. soft-copy display, is increasing within hospitals due to the growth in the use of digital modalities and picture archiving and communication systems (PACS). Non-dedicated image review using standard PCs is being employed as a cost-effective method of image access. These workstations do not have specialized display systems and are likely to suffer from inconsistent image presentation. The Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine (DICOM) Working Group 11 has developed a display function standard (part 14) to standardize the display of grey scale images. Although this standard is starting to be adopted by manufacturers of proprietary reporting systems it is not easily applied to the existing number of non-dedicated, PC-based review systems. The aim of this work was to investigate whether display consistency could be achieved simply and reproducibly on these systems, outside of the DICOM standard: part 14, by adjusting monitor brightness and contrast settings and using the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE) digital test pattern. The study showed that by adjusting the brightness and contrast settings alone it was possible to approximate the display characteristic curves to the grey scale standard display function (GSDF) defined in the DICOM standard: part 14, but only at unacceptably low luminances. Intradisplay and interdisplay consistency could be achieved using a simple monitor set-up procedure and the SMPTE test pattern.