Be confident in your diagnosis by getting the complete picture.
You've chosen your PACS provider and your preferred display. How do you decide which display controller board is right for you?
There are a number of factors to consider when choosing the right PACS for your facility. If you are purchasing displays for your workstation at the same time, the choice often rests on a side-by-side comparison test to determine radiologist preference. Some healthcare facilities leave the selection of display controller board (or graphics card) for their diagnostic workstations to their PACS solution provider, display vendor, or integrator. But the board is just as important as the other elements in your PACS workstation, and there are a number of points that might influence your decision.
Display support
The display controller board must support the monitor models, resolutions, and multiple-display configuration you have chosen for your workstation. In addition, you might consider whether the board can drive the other displays you have already deployed or may deploy in the future, including those with higher bit depths. This added flexibility helps minimize downtime and futureproof your investment, allowing you to swap displays as needed.
DICOM® calibration
Display quality, overall luminance, and DICOM compliance are likely factors affecting your choice of imaging displays and display controller board. You may also look for quality assurance software designed to check DICOM compliance on a periodic basis. While DICOM measurements are generally done at the center of a display, industry standards include a luminance uniformity requirement to ensure that optimum luminance is maintained from corner-to-center and edge-to-edge. Luminance uniformity may degrade over time, but Digital Luminance Correction (DLC™) technology now exists at the display controller board level to help correct discrepancies and maintain DICOM compliance.
Diagnostic confidence
Once you've maximized overall display luminance and uniformity, how do you know you're seeing the complete picture? Confidence in your diagnosis may be strengthened by the tools you are working with. Original medical images captured by various modalities are generally a higher bit-depth than the images seen on your workstation displays. Be sure to choose a display controller board with the highest on-board gamma LUTs capable of both calibrating and delivering higher bit depths directly to the display. Programmable hardware window IDs and LUTs are also an asset, since they allow your PACS developer to provide fast, tear-free, hardware-accelerated window/level performance, further enhancing your workflow.
Return-on-investment
Matrox Xenia™ is the first PCI Express board with triple-monitor support from a single-slot card and the built-in flexibility to drive practically any known medical or non medical display configuration on the market. Designed for use with a broad range of grayscale and color display models in a variety of configurations, Matrox Xenia Pro includes 1,024 MB of on-board RAM, supporting growing image volume requirements and display resolutions from as low as 1MP to as high as 8MP. With driver support for Microsoft® Windows Vista® in addition to XP®, new technology to ensure optimum calibration (including Matrox DLC™ and 8/10/13-bit gamma tables), plus additional development potential for increasing hardware-accelerated performance via hardware LUTs and multiple window IDs, you are investing in an expandable solution designed for medical imaging professionals, relevant now and for the future.
For more info about Xenia Series, contact us at graphics@matrox.com.