Liang Hongye, Park Subok, Gallas Brandon D, Myers Kyle J, Badano Aldo
CDRH/NIBIB Laboratory for the Assessment of Medical Imaging Systems, Division of Imaging and Applied Mathematics, U.S. Food and Drug Administration, 10903 New Hampshire Avenue, Building 62, Room 3113, Silver Spring, MD 20993, USA.
Acad Radiol. 2008 Mar;15(3):370-82. doi: 10.1016/j.acra.2007.10.017.
Statistics show that radiologists are reading more studies than ever before, creating the challenge of interpreting an increasing number of images without compromising diagnostic performance. Stack-mode image display has the potential to allow radiologists to browse large three-dimensional (3D) datasets at refresh rates as high as 30 images/second. In this framework, the slow temporal response of liquid crystal displays (LCDs) can compromise the image quality when the images are browsed in a fast sequence.
In this article, we report on the effect of the LCD response time at different image browsing speeds based on the performance of a contrast-sensitive channelized-hoteling observer. A stack of simulated 3D clustered lumpy background images with a designer nodule to be detected is used. The effect of different browsing speeds is calculated with LCD temporal response measurements from our previous work. The image set is then analyzed by the model observer, which has been shown to predict human detection performance in Gaussian and non-Gaussian lumpy backgrounds. This methodology allows us to quantify the effect of slow temporal response of medical liquid crystal displays on the performance of the anthropomorphic observers.
We find that the slow temporal response of the display device greatly affects lesion contrast and observer performance. A detectability decrease of more than 40% could be caused by the slow response of the display.
After validation with human observers, this methodology can be applied to more realistic background data with the goal of providing recommendations for the browsing speed of large volumetric image datasets (from computed tomography, magnetic resonance, or tomosynthesis) when read in stack-mode.
统计数据表明，放射科医生阅读的研究比以往任何时候都多，这带来了在不影响诊断性能的情况下解读越来越多图像的挑战。堆栈模式图像显示有可能使放射科医生以高达每秒30幅图像的刷新率浏览大型三维（3D）数据集。在此框架下，当快速浏览图像时，液晶显示器（LCD）较慢的时间响应可能会损害图像质量。
在本文中，我们基于对比敏感通道化霍特林观察者的性能，报告了不同图像浏览速度下LCD响应时间的影响。使用了一组带有待检测设计结节的模拟3D聚类块状背景图像堆栈。利用我们之前工作中LCD时间响应测量值计算不同浏览速度的影响。然后通过模型观察者分析该图像集，该模型观察者已被证明可预测在高斯和非高斯块状背景下的人类检测性能。这种方法使我们能够量化医用液晶显示器的慢时间响应对拟人化观察者性能的影响。
我们发现显示设备的慢时间响应极大地影响病变对比度和观察者性能。显示器的慢响应可能导致可检测性下降超过40%。
在经过人类观察者验证后，该方法可应用于更逼真的背景数据，目的是为以堆栈模式读取大型体积图像数据集（来自计算机断层扫描、磁共振或断层合成）时的浏览速度提供建议。
