Medical imaging continues to play a vital role in hospitals, urgent care centers, and a range of specialty healthcare environments across the globe. For dozens of years, x-rays were viewed on a view box (also referred to as a light box or illuminator). Such devices were made of lights placed behind a translucent screen and used to provide backlighting for radiographic images. The view box helped clinicians see the brightness, contrast, and details of the image. These devices played a very important role as they could very well affect the accuracy of radiographs being interpreted for diagnosis. In fact, with the use of such view boxes, some information could be lost if viewing conditions were not ideal.

Over the past decade, however, x-ray, radiography/fluoroscopy (R/F) units, portable x-ray, and mobile C-arms have largely been moved to digital flat panel technology, which, of course, produces digital images and requires a viewing monitor. More contemporary diagnostic display screens developed for radiologists offer significantly higher resolution, which is believed to be invaluable not only with regard to making critical diagnoses but also by doing so less strenuously. According to a study conducted by the Journal of the European Society of Digital & Integrative Pathology in 2016, higher display resolution used for digital pathology offers significant advantages. For example, with an increase in display resolution, the number of panning and zooming interactions with the images decreases. This is also helpful with regard to minimizing pathologist fatigue when reading digital images.

Digital radiography systems driven and powered by flat panel detectors, image acquisition software, and PACS will very likely produce much higher quality, higher resolution images than less contemporary imaging solutions. It is certainly significant, however, to note that those exceptional images can only truly be optimal with diagnostic quality viewing monitors.