Abstract

Some medical imaging modalities, such as position emission tomography, magnetic resonance imaging, and computed tomography, are exploring the use of monochrome and color CRT displays instead of traditional film displays. To investigate the advantages of different displays the display scales need to be evaluated and compared. I have developed a protocol to evaluate CRT display scales and used it to compare a pseudocolor scale, the heated object scale, and an achromatic scale. The heated object scale was selected because it appears as a natural color scale which can be effectively implemented on a CRT. Chromatic and luminance threshold data were obtained along the heated object scale. The stimuli were presented on a high-resolution graphics monitor using a spatial two-alternative forced-choice staircase procedure. The effects of reference chromaticity, stimulus size, mean luminance, blur, background field chromaticity, noise (uniform or magnetic resonance imaging), and observer differences were investigated. Results were transformed to the cube root of luminance and u′, v′ coordinates¹ and analyzed with statistical techniques.

© 1987 Optical Society of America