Need reccomendation for Dr. viewing x-rays

r00k

r00k

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One of my clients is in the dental field. He regularly views high resolution digital x-rays at each operatory station, and wants to use LCD panels. Currently he has 17 inch Planar PL1700M lcd's running at 1280x1024 on Intel Extreme 2 Graphics onboard video.

He is very interested in higher resolution panels, but given his situation i feel it important that he also have a high contrast ratio to handle the blacks and greys. He likes the 17 inch size, but i feel for the right panel he would be cool going 19, or widescreen. Response time is not a concern, as the images will mainly be stills.

Can somebody recommend me a great panel for this. Should i up the ante with a vid card with DVI, or will that make minimal difference?

edit: also, will there be noticeable improvement in a finer pixel pitch?
 
probably should stick with Planar as they come from the medical/industrial background.
 
I agree. Stick with panels that at designed for medical use.

They also cost x5 the amount of regular panels.
 
Computer LCDs monitors don't go above 1000:1 CR. The ones that say they do use "dynamic contrast" that helps in movies when they dim the backlight on a black screen, but when viewing simultaneous dark/light colors they are no better than monitors without these inflated CR numbers. So it's not like you're going to find a monitor with 5x better realy world contrast if you're willing to pay a little more.

There are some esoteric local backlight LED dimming monitors that have been shown but I dont think they are available in any reasonable price range, if at all.
 
Thanks for the linkage! I'll be checkin this out a bit more, later.
 
well.

they have those LED backlit ones from NEC. those would provide a very high level of REAL contrast vs. inflated numbers. I have often noticed that the video equipment I use is better than my radiologist's. so... not sure its always better what is suggested by those companies. THe led backlit ones have little hoods on them. they look neat. something like that is what I would use personally.
 
Medical imaging has no compatibility with computer monitors. They must be precise and totally accurate at every use. These types of displays calibrate themselves automatically and are at specific color temperatures (grayscale), contrast and brightness. It is a combination of computer hardware, including the video card and the special medical imaging software that combines with the medical monitor that give 100 percent accuracy and reliability viewing after viewing.

Would you like your doctor to make a decision on brain surgery for you using a Dell 2407 with a Spyder2 calibration then switch it to grayscale for the diagnosis?
 
r00k, stay away from computer monitors. You will need to ask the software manufacturer on what monitors are compatible. There are Federal minimum guidelines as to what can be used for medical and X-ray use.
 
In this case, the software in use will be Kodak Softdent, and the means of obtaining digital xrays being Schick sensors. Decisions made will not be life or death brain surgery, and doctor already does his job adequately. I do believe he is already at an advantage going digital. I don't mean to pretend to have a full idea of what's going on, but some of what i'm reading seems like it is poised for overkill. Although, if there are certain federal standards for this application in small dental offices, i would be certainly interested in finding out where i can read about that.
 
I would think that if you are dealing with black and white images, contrast would be of the utmost importance. If that is indeed the case, LCD would be a poor choice but if he's already managing with that LCD...

I checked out the specs on the PL1700M. They're awful. Its only got a 450:1 contrast ratio and a terrible viewing angle. So, he could benefit quite a lot from an LCD upgrade.

I highly recommend an S-IPS panel. This panel type does not have the best contrast (though still a large improvement over the PL1700M), but it has consistent contrast because of its superior viewing angle. Other panel types may cause the center of the monitor to appear darker and lose detail, for example.

Someone else will have to recommend you a model, though. I haven't kept up with 19" monitors.
 
The Dr. Should definitly be using something with an IPS panel. The current Planar he is using is scary since it uses a TN. Doing X-Rays on a display like that could easily lead him to miss many details.

Look at LCD1990SXi-BK or LCD1990FX-BK by NEC.
 
Actually contrast isn't as important as it only describes how bright the white is compared to the black level.
The problematic part is banding... on an xray it doesn't matter if the black is nice and solid (eg 1:1000 as light as the bright white),
it matters if the black can be distinguished from the dark grays and that the light grays aren't all white...
Working with print graphics i'm confident to be able to calibrate about any non TN display to display nearly all image information (the calibrator I use is the same you see on the NEC medical site),
but I highly doubt that your client is willing to recheck and calibrate his monitor regularly to make up for DIY hardware..

I suggest not to take chances with the chosen display, sticking to the mentioned precalibrated displays meant for this purpose,
the Eizo M http://radiforce.com/en/products/crm.html and NEC 90 medical line should be fine on the job without being to expensive,
Eizo seems to use PVA panels and are more expensive but they come with DICOM http://medical.nema.org/ standard precalibration.
 
travbomb said:
The current Planar he is using is scary since it uses a TN. Doing X-Rays on a display like that could easily lead him to miss many details.
Click to expand...

maybe he uses the bad viewing angles to do look at the image with different display properties.. ^_^, It could actually be beneficial if it wasn't for the 6bit color... ¬_¬;
 
Benny said:
but I highly doubt that your client is willing to recheck and calibrate his monitor regularly to make up for DIY hardware..
Click to expand...
on 2nd thought he doesn't seem to care much, if he's opting for the cheapest possible solution a Eizo FlexScan S1721 would be an option (PVA with 10bit LUT). But the NEC MultiSync LCD1990SXi (s-ips 12bit LUT) or eizo S-1910-M strongly recommended in this case (cheapest of the NEC and Eizo medical grade monitors the L568-M doesn't seem to be available anymore).
 
Go w/ the medical 4 yr. warranty series from NEC. They are the one who make the medical series and there is a difference btwn. that and regular LCD. Their web site will tell you more
 
Happy Hopping said:
Go w/ the medical 4 yr. warranty series from NEC. They are the one who make the medical series and there is a difference btwn. that and regular LCD. Their web site will tell you more
Click to expand...

There is a specialized medical series but there are a bunch of monitors that are listed in the professional and non high-end medical department.
http://www.nec-display-solutions.com/coremedia/generator/index,realm=Products__LCD,spec=x__uk__en
the US site is missing a few of the smaller medical displays listed in europe.
 
our radiologists use nice big NEC monitors, but yes they are around 5x the cost of normal monitors, but black-and-whites are clearly the most important things, and it is shocking the differences between non-radiologists' monitors and their ones, because its quite easy to miss some minor lung scarring without the different levels of blacks/whites that these displays have.
 
I'm a radiologist and all my work is done with high end LCD monitors which I have researched quite a bit so I thought I'd chime in here.

When the original poster mentions high resolution digital images I'll assume he's referring to computed radiography or plain x-rays rather that CT or MRI studies.

CT and MRI can be viewed on any resolution monitor. CT images are typically 512 x 512 pixels whereas MR images are usually only 256 x 256 pixels. In addition these images only utilize 256 shades of gray. Contrast is minimally important here (TN monitors are out as an earlier poster mentioned).

X-rays on the other hand require higher resolution AND the ability to display more shades of gray. Gray scale monitors are available and suited to this purpose. With the proper video card (10 bit) these monitors will display 1024 shades of gray which is generally more than the human eye can perceive. Contrast is more important here to enable differentiation of shades at the extreme ends of the gray scale. Calibration is also crucial and is often done automatically with software and sensors. You will not believe how much whiter 'white' is and how much blacker 'black' is on high end gray scale LCD monitors compared to color LCD monitors until you see it with your own eyes.

Most medical display LCD monitors are ~21". They can be 2, 3, or 5 megapixels (mp). I currently use NEC 21" 3mp (2048x1536) gray scale monitors (color monitors of this resolution are also available). I have also used 5mp monitors in the past. The dentist can likely get away with a 2mp (1600x1200) monitor because the anatomy he's reviewing is small (think mandible as opposed to abdomen for example). In other words he should be able to view the whole image at it's native pixel size without scaling, zooming or panning. The 2mp LCDs are considerably less expensive compared to 3mp and 5mp (2560x2048) LCD monitors.

In summary, the original poster should consider obtaining a 2mp gray scale monitor with an appropriate video card for displaying his diagnostic imaging work. (The professional NEC and Eizo monitors are widely available and need not be purchased through any special medical sales representatives.) If the user does only clinical imaging review rather than primary diagnosis then a high end consumer 2mp IPS LCD (20" or 21") can be considered.
 
Thank you exNSX for the professional input. It was sorely needed in this thread and many will learn from it.
 
Thanks esNSX for the excellent info, I had thot "grayscale" monochrome monitors died out years ago. They're still in use? wow
 
That's a link to their raw panels. I think you reversed the specification. The spec. states 766 gray scales per 1 pixel and 256 gray scales per 1 sub-pixel. So somehow that must make the 3061 shades of gray they advertise that their production gray scale monitors can display (I use the MD21GS-3MP).
 
thanks for the info exNSX.

There could be a 10bit panel but that would be (1024 shades - 2 black and white) * 3 = 3066.

Maybe there is a different filter (like the color filters) in front of one subpixel to make it produce the shades in between, they would loose some maximum brightness but acheve a glayscale dept o lot higher that way. But the number 3061 just seems a bit odd to me..

It's also possible that they use dithering to achieve a simulated higher grayscale dept. (but I highly doubt they would do so in a medical display..)

maybe travbomb knows how to find the answer.

UPDATE:
The european site is more informative, looks like it's 1024 out of a palette of 3061 scales, but I still wonder where these extra 256 scales come from... http://www.nec-display-solutions.co...ication,spec=x__uk__en,docId=170260,group=all
 
Thanks for the updated link.

My understanding is that it is a 10-bit panel but one needs to also drive it with a 10-bit video card to achieve the 1024 shades of gray. Standard 8-bit video cards will only display 256 shades of gray.

And then the spec. further states: Max. 1024 gray tones out of a pallet of 3061 (11.5 bit), which I suppose is similar to a LUT(?).
 
I think I read the same words somewhere describing a LUT so it's also my best guess ^^;

it probably still is the NEC 8bit panel, it's just that the 3x8 subpixels need a 10 bit card to make use of the added functionality (we could call it an inefficient 24bit panel ^^; ), It should be capable of displaying the full 3000 shades simultaneously if the subpixels where 10bit, needing a 12 bit card to do so. (now that sentence wouldn't make any sense taken out of context lol)
 
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