Why Ambient Light Is Important In The Reading Room?

Anantha Narayanan, Country Manager, EIZO Corporation, gives an insight on how ambient light can be of great use to radiologists to bring in more contrast and fatigue

Controlling ambientlighting in readingrooms is vital to ensuring that radiologists can see scans and notice potential problems as optimally as possible. There are two main reasons why it’s important: contrast and eye fatigue.

When viewing medical images, one of the most important factors for accurate diagnosis is contrast. The higher the contrast, the more differences in shades our eyes are able to see. Most medical monitors aim to provide high contrast screens, which is certainly the first and most important way to increase contrast. But even with a high contrast monitor, ambient light can greatly reduce contrast.

The most obvious ways ambient light affects contrast is through:

1) Diffuse reflections: when light is reflected uniformly across the screen, whitewashing the blacks on screen.

2) Specular reflections and glare: When light is reflected onto the screen directly from an external light source, or reflected off of an object, causing glare or a ‘specter’ of the object to appear on screen. This can be distracting and reduces the contrast at that specific location.