Increasing the number of gray shades in medical display systems--how much is enough?

Medical images produced by x-ray detectors, computed tomography (CT) scanners, and other modalities typically contain between 12-16 bits/pixel, which corresponds to 4,096-65,536 shades of gray. On the other hand, we see that these images are visualized by means of medical displays that have much lower available number of gray shades. For a long time medical LCDs only supported 8 bits or 256 shades of gray per pixel. With the introduction of medical displays optimized for mammography, the available number of gray scales increased to 1,024. Recently, several manufacturers announced new display systems with higher bit depth. Because higher bit depth often directly results in higher display cost, it is a logical question to ask if this is required or even useful at all. This paper will give an answer by investigating several aspects such as limitations of the human visual system, digital imaging and communication in medicine grayscale standard display function calibration, and characteristics of medical LCDs.