Hi all,
Just looking for some advice on home based calibration for diagnostic reporting. I have read a lot of things online but still struggling to find a clear source of truth. For non standard brands (outside of Barco/Eizo), is there a way to run RCR approved calibration? Should a calibration tool be purchased or does software exist that can be brand neutral?
Many thanks,
David
Hi David,
Theoretically, other monitors can be calibrated to meet RCR guidelines using an external calibrator (about £200) and software eg: QUBYX Perfectlum: https://qubyx.com/product/perfectlum/. However, they need to be bright enough to meet the luminance level required for DICOM part 14, which many are not and may not be able to maintain the ability to calibrate if they are run at (or close to) maximum brightness.
Other considerations are:
The ability maintain calibration: Medical displays have built in sensors to maintain constant brightness levels, where as standard monitors can fluctuate in performance.
QA conformity: Diagnostic displays need to be pass QA checks (TG18 etc) to ensure the screen meets requirements over the whole of the viewable area, which can be an issue with standard screens.
I hope this helps
Phil Mitchell
LG Medical Displays.
There is also a lot of good information in the more recent AAPM reports (TG270)
I would say that the most interesting output of those was the ‘how to set up a monitor’ paper a couple of years ago (when I can find the link I will post it here)
The key elements are:
can you set the low end so that it meets the criteria of being at least 4 times the ‘natural reflectance’ of the screen … which means having a good low end at about 1.5 nits and that is stable
THe other issue is going to be the sizing on the pixels themselves - a typical commercial monitor runs at about 250µ, whereas the clinicals are closer to 200µ - how much that effects reading beyond workflow can be argued, but it does relate to the spatial res and looking at 1:1 images which are that bit sharper in perception for the smaller pixels.
I won’t touch on the topic of colour match as that gets in to some really heady stuff - it has to be said that a greyscale medical monitor will avoid any of that
THe other great advantage of the main systems and their calibration software, is that normally it is (or can easily be) set up to report back to a central point so that you can be assured that the home workers are using kit that is up to your standards.
In the end, there are ways to set up good commercial displays - but when you add in the costs of extra software and the hardware to maintain the consistency and check all reporting is done to standard, then the margins get really close and IMHO maybe not worth the headache
Hi there
Author of the RCR displays document here.
This is a good answer.
You can calibrate many off the shelf displays to perform adequately for radiology reporting in a given situation but following our document standards, it needs to constantly remain within 10% tolerance.
That means you not only need to calibrate it once using a spectrophotometer and (niche) software, but carry out that process regularly.
Quite simply medical displays that self calibrate are much more dependable and convenient and really have also dropped in price if you look around and negotiate.
Best wishes
Dan
Whoops … the link I was supposed to add months ago is:
https://doi.org/10.1002/mp.14227
I trust you haven’t been hanging out for it for too long