The results of a numerical simulation indicate that scanning equalization radiography (SER) provides the opportunity to use film/screen combinations of significantly higher contrast than currently practical in conventional chest radiography. These calculations which attempt to maximize overall image contrast while minimizing areas of over and under exposure demonstrate that optimum film gradient varies inversely with scanning beam area. Furthermore, we show that in an SER system which we have optimized for chest imaging that the peak film gamma gradient can be increased from that typical of conventional films (3.0–3.5) to approximately 7 with advantage.