In digital radiography, saturation artifact occurs when exposure exceeds the system's dynamic range, causing:

• A. Loss of contrast in dark areas
• B. Increased noise
• C. Clipped highlights
• D. Image blur

Answer: (C)

In digital radiography, the detector can only record a limited range of brightness values. When exposure pushes beyond that range, the brightest parts of the image reach the maximum value the system can display and can’t get any brighter. That results in clipped highlights—bright areas appear as pure white with no detail because the signal has saturated. This isn’t primarily about more noise or blur; noise tends to come from too little signal, and blur comes from motion or geometric factors. Loss of contrast in dark areas would come from underexposure or limited ability to distinguish dark tones, not from saturation of bright regions. So the saturation artifact shows up as clipped highlights where bright structures lose detail.