Radiologist productivity has been a major factor limiting the acceptance of soft copy image displays. This situation is particularly acute in projection radiography. Three principal factors contribute to radiologist productivity: image quality, the user interface and system response time. These factors are not completely separable. In particular, it is difficult to optimize the user interface when system response times are a major limiting factor. A newly developed high speed multi-screen display system has enabled further refinement of the user interface into the subsecond regime. The present work focuses on optimizing control of zoom, roam and gray scale windowing. We describe the clinical optimization protocol and the user interface evolved therefrom. We also discuss the subjective impressions of the radiologists involved.© (1992) COPYRIGHT SPIE--The International Society for Optical Engineering. Downloading of the abstract is permitted for personal use only.