Some people today believe medical diagnostic displays are merely monitors, but this isn’t the case. These displays are some of the most crucial and powerful tools utilized in medicine today.

An individual must know a bit about how they are employed in order to speak intelligently on the topic, and why they are different from their consumer-grade cousins. This article will outline the four ways these screens are different and how they are utilized.

Is that black or is that grey: Quality assurance and calibration makes that clear

Performing regularly scheduled calibration is the one most important thing that medical diagnostic facilities have to ensure when working with medical diagnostic displays.

The reason why this is so critical for medical imaging displays is to ensure the best picture quality and to ensure that light levels are the same throughout the display not just at present but also as the monitor ages over time.

Under typical use, LCD screens can last over a decade, but the light source for backlit displays doesn’t last nearly as long. Bulbs become dimmer as they age, and their ability to show color or shades of gray becomes unbalanced.

For the physicians and health care professionals who translate into a loss of quality images and can mean an incorrect or missed interpretation for the patient. This is exactly what the malpractice lawyers lust later in this very litigious world, the proverbial smoking gun.

If there is a missed diagnosis or medical malpractice case, attorneys will frequently subpoena the maintenance records of the displays utilized for interpretation. Asking to see the maintenance reports and calibration records on the diagnostic monitors used in their client could be enough to begin to construct a potential case.

Medical Monitors Warranty

Generally, medical monitors are only covered under warranty for five years. This is because the five-year mark is when the projection lamps usually start to age and deteriorate after typical use.

Usually, to ensure their diagnostic quality, these displays include an integrated monitoring system. These detectors limit the downtime for these monitors and no longer need a technician to physically test each monitor (an instance of True IoT Technology).

Medical diagnostic imaging isn’t only critical for the identification, identification, treatment, and prevention of disease it’s also a very higher money maker for these facilities. Having these machines down or under testing slows down the center, costing money and time.

So the physician can review before and after pictures, the normal installation for a radiology review station is two monitors side-by-side. Vendors are now providing larger, single screens that eliminate the requirement for two screens as well as the bezel separating the two displays.

This enables better screening, without the distraction of the bezel when going between the images. In this setup curved displays are also popular to wrap the doctor in the picture horizontally. It is very important to make sure that the monitors are calibrated.

Until recently, all diagnostic imaging has been performed in black and white, with grayscale showing different densities within the research. Typically, color did not have the brightness required to supply a suitable radiographic interpretation.

Usually, the color needed more energy to generate brighter outputs, this would have a negative impact on the lamps and the system as a whole. Currently, using OLED Technology (An organic light-emitting diode (OLED)) is a light-emitting diode (LED) in which the emissive electroluminescent layer is a film of a natural compound that emits light in response to an electrical current.

This layer of organic semiconductor is situated between two electrodes; usually, at least one of these electrodes is transparent. The displays aren’t backlit in any way, allowing the color to be used more widely.

Black is a true black and not a backlit black with OLED. This shows a bigger contrast when utilizing these displays for diagnosis. OLED Technology displays are usually lighter and thinner than traditional displays.

The utilization of color, especially blue and red can now exhibit the flow of venous and arterial blood within an image to help with the diagnosis of vascular conditions such as stenosis or calcification of arteries.

This technology is now so advanced that these displays are able to display flowing blood and track the velocities of the blood as it moves through the arteries and veins of the body.

The speed (clinically called velocity) of the blood flow within the body can be affected by a narrowing of the artery, called stenosis, and can even block blood flow completely (an occlusion).

Medical professionals are now able to picture this in real-time. These monitors may also show blood flow to tumors in concert with imagining the size (shrinking or growing) of these tumors without subjecting a patient to exploratory surgery.

Typically, consumer-grade monitors didn’t have sufficient luminance, so they were not bright enough to show sufficient shades of gray for acceptable analytical interpretation. Industrial grade monitors are getting close to being accepted as technology advances.

It would be tricky to find consumer-grade monitors in a true medical diagnostic lab. However, consumer-grade displays are utilized throughout hospitals and doctors’ offices but not for diagnostic purposes.

Having the proper equipment is critical, as is having a designated”Command Center” for medical imaging inspection within a diagnostic center. OLED Technology has brought color to medical imaging and can aid in the interpretation and diagnosis of specific medical conditions.

Medical imaging isn’t only vital to care but it is a big moneymaker for medical facilities, downtime on these command channels literally can cost the facility thousands of dollars.