PURPOSE

The American Association of Physicists in Medicine (AAPM) Task Group 18 is a national task force consisting of medical imaging experts and organizational affiliates dealing with performance evaluation of electronic display devices. The purpose of the Task Group is to generate a document that provides guidelines to practicing medical physicists and engineers for in-field performance evaluation of electronic display devices intended for medical use. Some of the goals of the Task Group include:

1. Standardization: providing standard testing methods for evaluating the performance of electronic display devices utilized in medicine, allowing inter- and intra-institutional comparisons

2. Establishing performance criteria: recommending minimum performance requirements for “safe” utilization of electronic displays in medical and radiologic applications

3. Education: educating medical physicists and other health-care professionals about display technology and display quality issues relevant to medical imaging

4. Communication: facilitating communication between industry, medical physicists, researchers, and other individuals/organizations dealing with display quality characterization

5. Professional: further expanding the role of medical physics in the growing area of PACS

CONTACT INFORMATION

Ehsan Samei, Ph.D.

Duke Advanced Imaging Laboratories, Duke University Medical Center

2424 Erwin Rd, Suite 302, Durham, NC 27705, U.S.A

Voice: 919-684-7756, FAX: 919-684-1490, Email: samei@duke.edu.

DOWNLOAD TG18 REPORT AND EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Important Notice:

The materials are copyrighted by the AAPM and is subject to their rules and regulations. If used in any professional, educational, scientific, or commercial capacity, the source should be properly acknowledged by citing the TG18 citation provided below.

Download TG18 from the AAPM server or the Duke server (12.8 MB).

Download TG18 Executive Summary published in Medical Physics (900 kB).

Citation for TG18 Report:

Samei E, Badano A, Chakraborty D, Compton K, Cornelius C, Corrigan K, Flynn MJ, Hemminger B, Hangiandreou N, Johnson J, Moxley M, Pavlicek W, Roehrig H, Rutz L, Shepard J, Uzenoff R, Wang J, Willis C. Assessment of Display Performance for Medical Imaging Systems, Report of the American Association of Physicists in Medicine (AAPM) Task Group 18, Medical Physics Publishing, Madison, WI, AAPM On-Line Report No. 03, April 2005.

Citation for TG18 Executive Summary:

Samei E, Badano A, Chakraborty D, Compton K, Cornelius C, Corrigan K, Flynn MJ, Hemminger B, Hangiandreou N, Johnson J, Moxley-Stevens DM, Pavlicek W, Roehrig H, Rutz L, Shepard J, Uzenoff RA, Wang J, Willis CE. Assessment of display performance for medical imaging systems: Executive summary of AAPM TG18 report. Medical Physics 32(4):1205-1225, 2005.

DOWNLOAD TG18 TEST PATTERNS

Important Notice:

Medical physicists, investigators, vendors, or other users can utilize the authentic copy-righted TG18 patterns for any professional, investigational, educational, or commercial purposes. However, the patterns may not be altered in any form or fashion, and their labels may not be removed. Alternatively, with the aid of the descriptions provided in Section 3 and Appendix III of the TG18 document and with the exception of anatomical test patterns, the users may generate patterns similar to the TG18 patterns. To do so, four requirements should be observed:

1) The original reference should be acknowledged (see TG18 citation below).

2) The generated pattern may not duplicate the original TG18 label.

3) The generated pattern should include a label indicating that it is a synthetic pattern based on the description provided in the TG18 document.

4) If the pattern is scaled (e.g., a new 1.5k x 2k pattern versus the original 1k and 2k patterns), all the specified elements of the original pattern should be present, and the label should indicate that it is a scaled pattern.

In using the patterns, for most patterns, it is essential to have a one-on-one relationship between the image pixels and the display pixels, unless indicated otherwise in the test procedures in Section 4 of the document. Patterns in DICOM and 16-bit TIFF formats should be displayed with a window and level set to cover the range from 0 to 4095 (W = 4096, L =2048).

TG18 Citation:

The winzip-compressed patterns in DICOM and 16-bit tiff format can be downloaded by clicking on the following links (a high-speed Internet connection is recommended):

DICOM Format

1k multi-purpose patterns (222 kB) including

1k TG18-QC pattern (90 kB)

2k multi-purpose patterns (698 kB)

2k TG18-QC pattern (296 kB)

1k luminance patterns (278 kB)

1k resolution patterns (262 kB)

2k resolution patterns (711 kB)

1k noise patterns (69 kB)

1k glare patterns (191 kB)

2k anatomical patterns (18 MB) including

2k chest pattern (5.4 MB)