The Importance of an Image

"Image quality is a capacious term which can mean different things to different people. For instance, a radiologist when viewing a radiograph may be interested primarily in the diagnostic value of an image...

...while a radiographer may focus on how well the image represents the anatomy and a physicist may be interested in the contrast, resolution and noise properties[2]. All have an interest nonetheless in keeping the patient's absorbed dose as low as reasonably achievable.

A physics perspective provides objective measures of image contrast, resolution and noise which can be used to compare the performance of different image receptors and different exposure techniques, for instance. However, its apparent that such measurements on their own provide little information of direct clinical value. Furthermore, it is apparent that an absorbed dose measurement on its own provides little information regarding the value of an examination nor the physical image quality of the radiographs.

Given that there is a stochastic health risk from all X-ray examinations, it is reasonable to conclude that image quality should be assessed in conjunction with absorbed dose measurements so that the likely benefit to the patient can be determined relative to the health risk from the radiation exposure."

(-Courtesy of Wikipedia / wikibooks section)