How Do Radiologists Use the Human Search Engine?

Eye-Tracking in the Study of Visual Expertise: Methodology and Approaches in Medicine

“…An important innovation in this area was the development of eye-tracking systems that measured multiple features of the eye in order to infer position relative to a visual stimulus (Holmqvist, 2011). Optical properties of the eye, such as corneal reflection and pupil location, vary differently under conditions of head versus eye movement, and their recordings can be used to solve for the actual gaze point of the viewer (for additional discussion, (Wolfe, Evans, Drew, Aizenman, & Josephs, 2015)). By utilizing non-visible light, such as near-infrared light sources, such eye-trackers can be made less noticeable, and easier to use in a variety of lighting conditions.…”

“…Tourassi, Voisin, Paquit, & Krupinski, 2013;G. D. Tourassi, Mazurowski, Harrawood, & Krupinski, 2010;Wolfe et al, 2015). These studies often utilize static images, which are relatively easy to employ in eye-tracking experimental designs and analyses, but which don't always translate to the visual environments of other clinical specialties.…”

“…D. Tourassi et al, 2010; | F L R 46 2015). The visual expertise learned by radiologists is an example of a search-related task, in which the radiologist identifies visual "targets" in an image containing both expected and "distractor" elements (Wen et al, 2016;Wolfe et al, 2015). Screening tests, both in radiology and pathology, are generally performed using a visual search model (Stewart et al, 2007;Wolfe, 1995).…”

“…In this visual task, search is required because everything in the visual field cannot be identified and processed simultaneously. Object recognition is limited to one, or a small number of objects at one time (Wolfe, 2012b;Wolfe et al, 2015). Attention may appear random, but is often guided by multiple cognitive mechanisms.…”

Prospects and Pitfalls in Combining Eye Tracking Data and Verbal Reports

“…The gaze, however, can be trained to make the best out of the few fixations: the novice's gaze is often drawn by salient, bottom-up features, whereas experts more often focus on top-down, task-relevant features, as evidenced by Bertram, Helle, Kaakinen, and Svedström (2013). (See also Wolfe, Evans, Drew, Aizenman, & Josephs, 2015). Fourth, although information flows into the system incessantly, working-memory capacity is limited to approximately four "chunks," or combinations of items, at a time (Cowan, 2010).…”