Welcome
to the webpage of the AAPM TG18.
Last
update: January 10, 2006
American Association
of Physicists in Medicine (AAPM)
Task Group 18
Assessment of Display
Performance
for
Medical Imaging Systems
Download the TG18 report (final version) Download the executive summary of the TG18
report published in Medical Physics Download the Test Patterns (DICOM and Tiff formats) 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 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. 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. 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: 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. 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) 2k knee
pattern (4.0 MB) 2k
mammography patterns No. 1 and No. 2 (8.6 MB) 16-bit TIFF Format 1k
multi-purpose patterns (215 kB) including 1k
TG18-QC pattern (88 kB) 2k
multi-purpose patterns (694 kB) 2k
TG18-QC pattern (293 kB) 1k luminance
patterns (261 kB) 1k resolution
patterns (253 kB) 2k resolution
patterns (709 kB) 1k noise
patterns (66 kB) 1k glare
patterns (183 kB) 2k anatomical
patterns (18 MB) including 2k chest pattern
(5.5 MB) 2k knee
pattern (4.0 MB) 2k
mammography pattern No. 1 (4.0 MB) 2k
mammography pattern No. 2 (4.6 MB) Medical display device
manufacturers: Barco: www.barco.com Clinton-Orwin: www.clintonelectronics.com Data-Ray: www.data-ray.com Image Systems: www.imagesystemscorp.com National Display Systems: www.nationaldisplay.com Planar: www.planar.com Siemens: www.ad.siemens.de/monitors Totoku: http://www.totoku.com/dp/ Photometer and
colorimeter manufacturers: Cooke Photonics: www.cookecorp.com/photonic/ Gossen Foto: www.gossen-photo.de
and www.caltemp-gossen.com Lichtmesstechnik GmbH Image Smiths: www.image-smiths.com/ International Light, Inc.: www.intl-light.com Minolta: www.minoltausa.com Photo Research: www.photoresearch.com Scanditronix-Wellhofer: www.scanditronix-wellhofer.com/ Tektronix: www.tek.com/Measurement/multimeters/index.html Unfors: www.unfors.com Organizations of interest: American Association of Physicists
in Medicine (AAPM): www.aapm.org International Society for Optical
Engineering (SPIE): www.spie.org Medical Image Perception Society
(MIPS): www.radiology.arizona.edu/~eye-mo/mips.htm Society for Computer Applications
in Radiology (SCAR): www.scarnet.org Society of Motion Picture and
Television Engineers (SMPTE): www.smpte.org Sarnoff Corp and National
Information Display Laboratory (NIDL): www.sarnoff.com Radiological Society of North
America (RSNA): www.rsna.org Video Electronics Standard
Association (VESA): www.vesa.org Other links: Thomas Register: www.thomasregister.com/
PURPOSE
CONTACT
INFORMATION
DOWNLOAD
TG18 REPORT AND EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
DOWNLOAD
TG18 TEST PATTERNS
LINKS