An array of Factors Affecting Image Quality

If you are running any medical facility, then there are maximum chances that you will have to get involved in the technical stuff. You can’t run a medical facility without proper knowledge of the different machines used during the diagnosis and treatment. You should know that most medical facilities use various medical equipment to give the right diagnosis and treatment to their patients. One such medical marvel used by medical facilities is radiography.

It doesn’t matter whether it is about finding a fracture in the bone or getting an MRI scan; the medical facility has to use the power of radiology and different rays. You should know that just using these radiography and X-rays based machines is not enough as you will have to take care of every aspect. And one such factor that we are going to cover in this blog post is image quality.

The image quality is one of the prime factors that will define your medical machines’ performance based on radiography and X-rays, which is why we will now look at the different factors that affect image quality. Keep reading for better image quality control.

Contrast

One of the most critical factors that affect the image quality is, indeed, contrasts. You should know that contrast is the difference in the image signal intensity or the displayed image. This difference is mostly between two areas of interest. This means that the difference mentioned in the case of contrast will always stay between only two areas of interest, like background tissue and lesion.

If you have a high contrast, then this means that you will always have a more significant difference between the grey shade, but this also means that you will get a decreased range of greys. And thus, you can understand why a low contrast always has a low difference, but it will come with a bigger range of greys.

Another critical factor that you will need to get familiar with while understanding contrast is subject contrast. In simple words, subject contrast is the ratio of radiation intensities in particular parts of the image. This will be a result of the quality of the subject being tested.

Resolution

The second factor that will affect your image quality will be the resolution, and you can never overlook resolution when it comes down to image quality control. Resolution is the measurement of how far two objects must be to look like different entities in the image. There are many different ways used in the modern era to measure the resolution.

In addition to understanding what resolution is and how it affects image quality control, you will also need to go through the different factors that affect resolution. If the system’s resolution will be too high, then there is no way the system will show the image. If the spatial object frequency will be higher than the MTF will always be lower, the system will never differentiate between line pairs, and you will be a homogenous grey.

Noise

You should know that the photons that make up an image, and you should also know that the number of photons making different parts of the image can vary, and this simple variation that is measured for photons is known as noise.

If there will be noise, then the signal being received from the subject will be hindered. If the total number of photons forming an image will increase, then the noise will also increase. In most cases, this random and simple variation is mentioned as standard deviation, which is basically calculated from the square root of the number of photons per area. You will need to deal with noise if you are looking forward to better image quality control.

But one of the most important things to note down here is when the quantum noise is calculated as a proportion of the entire signal, the noise decreases with the increase in the number of photons. If you are successful in reducing the noise, you will have a better quality of images, so dealing with noise is crucial.

Taking care of the image quality control is crucial if you are looking forward to proper diagnosis and treatment. With adequate image quality control, you will never have to deal with any issue with your X-ray and radiography machines. You can consider the factors mentioned in this blog post to have better image quality and provide better medical service.