Consumer displays require more vigilance and quality control effort than medical grade ones, but this is offset by the cheaper price, color capability and ease of deployment and replacement, concludes a new study. by Massachusetts General Hospital researchers who presented their results this Tuesday at the 2007 Radiological Society of North America (RSNA) annual meeting, in Chicago.

The team, led by David Hirschorn, MD, used high brightness color consumer displays on many of their PACS workstations for two years and measured their performance. Their findings were then reviewed with regard to luminance degradation, DICOM conformance and artifacts.

Twenty-five pairs of the Dell 2405 and 2407 color flat panel displays on workstations were deployed in the radiology department. Their brightness was set to maximum and they were calibrated to the DICOM Part 14 Grayscale Display Function. Resolution was set to the full native resolution of the display, 2.3 megapixels. Checks were performed at three to six month intervals for calibration conformance and to check for artifacts.

"As expected, the displays typically started out at about 450 cd/m2 and decayed to about 400 cd/m2 over one year", Dr Hirschorn reported. "Interestingly, the decay in brightness had only a mild effect on calibration conformance."

Two types of artifacts were noted. Some demonstrated burn-in from patterns that were left on the screen for too long, but this was usually reversible when the offending pattern was no longer displayed. Some others demonstrated some broad smudgy bands called yogore after a year. Most of the displays had neither of these problems, and most of those that did were addressed by the vendor.

As compared to the medical grade displays, Dr Hirschorn pointed out, these displays did require more vigilance and more effort for quality control. However, this was offset by the benefits of using a color display that costs about ten times less and can be much more easily procured and replaced.

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