title: Development of a high quality film duplication system using a laser digitizer: comparison with computed radiography.
abstract: A high quality film-duplication system was developed in order to improve the image quality of duplicated radiographs and to recover improperly exposed films. The system consists of a laser film digitizer, a laser film printer, a workstation, and a magneto-optical disk. Radiographs are digitized by the laser digitizer, processed by the computer for image enhancement, and then printed on a film by the laser printer. A nonlinear density-correction technique is employed in recovering improperly exposed radiographs using the H&D curve of the screen-film system. Using the new duplication system in our department, the average recovery rate was over 80% for chest and abdominal films rejected due to over- or underexposed. The basic imaging properties of the duplication system were compared with those of a Computed Radiography (CR) system and a conventional screen-film system. For low spatial frequencies, the MTF of the CR system is superior to that of the digital duplication system; however, for high spatial frequencies, the MTF of the duplication system is superior. The noise in the duplication system is about half of that in the CR system.
authors.affiliation: Kurt Rossmann Laboratories for Radiologic Image Research, Department of Radiology, University of Chicago, Illinois 60637.
authors.forename: H
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Yoshimura
authors.forename: X W
authors.initials: XW
authors.lastname: Xu
authors.forename: K
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Doi
authors.forename: H
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: MacMahon
authors.forename: K R
authors.initials: KR
authors.lastname: Hoffmann
authors.forename: M L
authors.initials: ML
authors.lastname: Giger
authors.forename: S M
authors.initials: SM
authors.lastname: Montner
mesh_terms: D055592:Biophysical Phenomena; D001703:Biophysics; D003308:Copying Processes / Q000379:methods* / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D005069:Evaluation Studies as Topic; D006801:Humans; D007834:Lasers; D011856:Radiographic Image Enhancement / Q000379:methods; D014962:X-Ray Film