Lumileds' High-Flux LEDs Will Power New Medical Monitors from FIMI Philips, Offering Tunable White Points and Improved Color Fidelity for Better Diagnoses

First 15" Model Using Lumileds' Luxeon Backlight System Set for Summer Release

Lumileds Lighting today announced that FIMI Philips, a leading manufacturer of professional display solutions, is using Lumileds' Luxeon (PRWEB) February 6, 2002 -flux Light Emitting Diode (LED) technology to improve color fidelity and extend product life for a new line of medical monitors. The Luxeon-powered backlight system in the new displays will facilitate accurate diagnoses and provide other benefits for endoscopy, ultrasound, ICU patient monitoring and other applications where precise color, high brightness and exceptional product reliability are required.
    Scheduled to begin production this summer with a 15" model, FIMI's new monitors will be the first medical-grade displays to use LEDs rather than cold cathode fluorescent lamps (CCFLs) for LCD backlights. Lumileds' chip-controlled Luxeon technology will overcome a variety of limitations inherent in CCFL-based displays that can affect medical interpretation as well as replacement cycles. Key advantages of the new units will include:

-- Tunable white points, enabling users to adjust the white point to their individual preferences without a reduction in grayscale levels. This feature will also allow remote physicians to set the same white point on their respective monitors to ensure a common view of a given image when conferring about a patient.
-- A wider color gamut with more saturated and lifelike colors, particularly useful for endoscopy applications where color accuracy and differentiation can aid in diagnosis and surgery.
-- Real-time color management, allowing colors to be set to users' specifications, tracked via sensor, and automatically adjusted for consistency at any time. In contrast, fluorescent-based backlights cannot be readjusted to compensate for edging effect-related color changes that occur over the life of the monitor.
-- Non-degrading ultra-bright display, offering twice the brightness of traditional LCD monitors. This extra image contrast not only aids diagnosticians but also can be maintained very accurately for the life of the monitor, thanks to automatic electronic adjustment that is not available on standard displays which compensates for brightness degradation over time.
-- A 50,000-hour life expectancy, more than twice that of LCD monitors with standard fluorescent-based backlights, thanks to the longer lifetime of LEDs.

    "For medical imaging applications where color rendition is important as well as ICUs where displays are in use around the clock, these new monitors will offer clear performance advantages over any other product on the market because of the distinct differences between CCFL backlights and solid state illumination," said Franco Martegani, Managing Director of FIMI Philips. "Lumileds' Luxeon technology is making it possible for us to create a completely new category of medical display, and the entire medical community will benefit."
    "FIMI Philips was quick to recognize the value of our technology for LCD backlights, and their understanding of the potential applications will make them first to market with LED-based displays designed for medical use," said Mark Pugh, Lumileds VP of Strategic Marketing. "By offering the ability to improve the accuracy of diagnoses, these new systems stand to have a positive impact on healthcare around the world."

    About Lumileds Lighting

    Lumileds Lighting is the world's leading manufacturer of high-power LEDs and a pioneer in the use of solid state lighting solutions for everyday purposes including automotive lighting, traffic signaling, signage, LCD backlighting and general lighting. The company's patented Luxeon Power Light Sources are the first to combine the brightness of conventional lighting with the small footprint, long life and other advantages of LEDs. Lumileds also supplies core LED material and LED packaging, manufacturing billions of LEDs annually, and ranks as the producer of the world's brightest red, amber, blue, green and white LEDs.
    A joint venture between Agilent Technologies and Philips Lighting, Lumileds is headquartered in San Jose, California, with operations in the Netherlands and Malaysia and sales offices throughout the world. For more information, call Lumileds at 877-298-9455 or visit www.lumileds.com.

    About FIMI Philips

    FIMI Philips is a leading manufacturer of professional display solutions for a variety of industries. The company is a market leader in the field of public information and flight information displays, with thousands of systems installed in airports, railways and bus stations, as well as graphic and medical displays. Products include CRT, TFT, LCD-Rear Projection and Plasma information panels and screens, with leading-edge technologies including Large Screen LCD (29"), LCOS for rear projection systems and Tiled-LCD for very large screen LCD Panels under development.
    FIMI Philips is headquartered in northern Italy and is a division of Royal Philips Electronics (NYSE: PHG), one of the world's biggest electronic companies. For more information, visit www.fimi.philips.com.