Performance evaluation of medical LCD displays using 3D channelized Hotelling observers

Abstract

High performance of the radiologists in the task of image lesion detection is crucial for successful medical practice. One relevant factor in clinical image reading is the quality of the medical display. With the current trends of stack-mode liquid crystal displays (LCDs), the slow temporal response of the display plays a significant role in image quality assurance. In this paper, we report on the experimental study performed to evaluate the quality of a novel LCD with advanced temporal response compensation, and compare it to an existing state-of-the-art display of the same category but with no temporal response compensation. The data in the study comprise clinical digital tomosynthesis images of the breast with added simulated mass lesions. The detectability for the two displays is estimated using the recent multi-slice channelized Hotelling observer (msCHO) model which is especially designed for multi-slice image data. Our results suggest that the novel LCD allows higher detectability than the existing one. Moreover, the msCHO results are used to advise on the parameters for the follow up image reading study with real medical doctors as observers. Finally, the main findings of the msCHO study were confirmed by a human reader study (details to be published in a separate paper). © 2011 SPIE.