With increasing availability of medical image communication infrastructures, medical images are more and more displayed as soft-copies rather than as hard-copies. Often however, the image viewing environment is characterized by high ambient light, such as in surgery rooms or offices illuminated by daylight. We are describing a very-high- brightness cathode-ray-tube (CRT) monitor which accommodates these viewing conditions without the typical deterioration in resolution due to electron focal spot blooming. The three guns of a standard color CRT are used to create a high brightness monochrome monitor. The CRT has no shadow-mask, and a homogeneous P45 phosphor layer has been deposited instead of the structured red-green-blue color phosphor screen. The electron spots of the three guns are dynamically matched by applying appropriate waveforms to four additional multiple magnetic fields around the gun assembly. We evaluated the image quality of the triple-gun CRT monitor concerning parameters which are especially relevant for medical imaging applications. We have measured characteristic curves, dynamic range, veiling glare, resolution, spot profiles, and screen noise. The monitor can provide a high luminance of more than 200 fL. Due to nearly perfect matching of the three spots, the resolution is mainly determined by the beam profile of a single gun and is remarkably high even at these high luminance values. The P45 phosphor shows very little structure noise, which is an advantage for medical desktop applications. Since all relevant monitor parameters are digitally controlled, the status of the monitor can be fully characterized at any time. This feature particularly facilitates the reproduction of brightness and contrast values and hence allows easy implementation of a display function standard or to return to a desired display function that has been found useful for a given application in the past.

Date Published: 7 May 1997
PDF: 11 pages
Proc. SPIE 3031, Medical Imaging 1997: Image Display, (7 May 1997); doi: 10.1117/12.273946

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 3031:
Medical Imaging 1997: Image Display
Yongmin Kim, Editor(s)