Initial clinical experience with a film-based digital enhancement system for musculoskeletal radiology

A high-resolution real-time video-based digital enhancement system was used to scrutinize various musculoskeletal lesions in patients having equivocal diagnoses, questionable progression of disease, or normal studies when the clinical suspicion was high. The system digitizes an image into a 525 X 480-pixel matrix with a dynamic range of 11 bits (2,048 gray levels). This image can be readily manipulated and converted back to analog for hard-copy archiving. The digitizer offers magnification, contrast enhancement, background subtraction, contour edge enhancement, and chromatic reversal (black or white). These features have proved helpful in evaluating subtle cortical and trabecular bone changes in patients with inflammatory, traumatic, metabolic, and neoplastic conditions