Use-inspired basic research in medical image perception

Abstract

This journal is dedicated to “use-inspired basic research” where a problem in the world shapes the hypotheses for a study in the laboratory. This brief review presents several examples of “use-inspired basic research” in the area of medical image perception. These are cases where the field of radiology raises an interesting issue in visual cognition. Basic research on those issues may then lead to proposals to improve performance on clinical tasks in medical image perception. Of the six examples given here, the first three ask essentially perceptual questions: How can stereopsis improve medical image perception? How shall we assess the tradeoff between radiation dose and image quality? How does the choice of colors change the interpretation of medical images? The second three examples address attentional issues in those aspects of radiology that can be described as visual search problems: Can eye tracking help us understand errors in radiologic search? What happens if the number of targets in an image is unknown? What happens if, as in radiology screening programs, the target of search is very rare?