Breast mass detection under increased ambient lighting

Under typical dark conditions found in mammography reading rooms, a reader's pupils will contract and dilate as the visual focus moves between the high luminance display and the darker background wall, potentially resulting in visual fatigue and degraded diagnostic performance. A controlled increase of ambient lighting can, however, minimize this luminance discrepancy, potentially reducing pupillary action while improving reader comfort and detection ability. A psychophysical study was conducted to determine the effect of a controlled ambient lighting increase on observer detection of subtle masses within mammograms viewed on a DICOM-calibrated medical-grade LCD. Four mammographers read 86 mammograms (43 normal and 43 with cancerous masses) under a dark room condition (1 lux) and an elevated room illuminance level (50 lux). Results show generally constant or decreased average selection times and decreased average observer performance under elevated illuminance. Differences, however, were not statistically significant, and of the same magnitude as interobserver variability. © 2008 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.

Duke Scholars

Author Ehsan Samei Radiology