Investigating the Association of Eye Gaze Pattern and Diagnostic Error in Mammography

Conference · Tue Jan 01 04:00:00 EST 2013

OSTI ID:1063821

Voisin, Sophie ^[1]; Pinto, Frank M ^[1]; Xu, Songhua ^[1]; Morin-Ducote, Garnetta ^[2]; Hudson, Kathy ^[2]; Tourassi, Georgia ^[1]

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1. ORNL
2. University of Tennessee, Knoxville (UTK)

The objective of this study was to investigate the association between eye-gaze patterns and the diagnostic accuracy of radiologists for the task of assessing the likelihood of malignancy of mammographic masses. Six radiologists (2 expert breast imagers and 4 Radiology residents of variable training) assessed the likelihood of malignancy of 40 biopsy-proven mammographic masses (20 malignant and 20 benign) on a computer monitor. Eye-gaze data were collected using a commercial remote eye-tracker. Upon reviewing each mass, the radiologists were also asked to provide their assessment regarding the probability of malignancy of the depicted mass as well as a rating regarding the perceived difficulty of the diagnostic task. The collected data were analyzed using established algorithms and various quantitative metrics were extracted to characterize the recorded gaze patterns. The extracted metrics were correlated with the radiologists diagnostic decisions and perceived complexity scores. Results showed that the visual gaze pattern of radiologists varies substantially, not only depending on their experience level but also among individuals. However, some eye gaze metrics appear to correlate with diagnostic error and perceived complexity more consistently. These results suggest that although gaze patterns are generally associated with diagnostic error and the human perceived difficulty of the diagnostic task, there are substantially individual differences that are not explained simply by the experience level of the individual performing the diagnostic task.

• Research Organization: Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL)
• Sponsoring Organization: ORNL LDRD Director's R&D
• DOE Contract Number: AC05-00OR22725
• OSTI ID: 1063821
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English