MEDICAL IMAGING ON MAC: HOW MAC'S COLOR MANAGEMENT CAN GET YOUR DISPLAY OFF CALIBRATION

Immensely popular with consumers, Mac machines are gradually - and quite predictably - winning the medical imaging market. More and more Mac machines are used for diagnostic and reviewing purposes, especially as home workstations. The open source DICOM viewer Osirix enjoys great success in the medical world, and so does its FDA-cleared and CE-certified version, offered by Pixmeo.

But the thing is the sophisticated color management system Macs are equipped with can be quite tricky for a medical display. It offers many advantages for correct color and luminance reproduction, but can also present a risk, if set up incorrectly.

How Does Mac's Color Management Work?

Mac OS uses ICC profiles to apply a correction LUT (generally referred to as Gamma) to the desktop, but also applies 3D LUT’s inside the imaging application. Color management can not be deactivated on Mac, and a correction will always be applied both to the desktop and inside the imaging application.