Influence of liquid crystal display monitors on observer performance for detection of diffuse pulmonary disease on chest radiographs

Purpose The purpose of this study was to assess the influence of liquid crystal display (LCD) monitors on the detectability of diffuse pulmonary diseases depicted on chest radiographs by comparing them with a high-resolution cathode ray tube (CRT) monitor. Materials and methods A group of 17 radiologists interpreted 87 soft-copy images on LCD monitors with pixel arrays of 1024 × 1280, 1200 × 1600, 1536 × 2048, and 2048 × 2560 and on a CRT monitor with a pixel array of 2048 × 2560. They were asked to indicate their individual confidence levels regarding the presence of diffuse pulmonary diseases. The luminance distributions of all monitors were adjusted to the same distributions, and the ambient illumination was 200 lux. Observer performance was analyzed in terms of the receiver operating characteristics (ROC). Results The average ROC curves for the five monitor types were similar, and there were no statistically reliable effects of the five monitor types on the readers’ diagnostic performances (P = 0.7587). Conclusion The detectability of diffuse pulmonary disease on the LCD monitors with a spatial resolution equal to or higher than a matrix size of 1024 × 1280 was found to be equivalent to that on the high-resolution CRT monitor.