Determining the relative importance of figures in journal articles to find representative images

Henning Müller; Antonio Foncubierta-Rodríguez; Chang Lin; Ivan Eggel

doi:10.1117/12.2007843

29 March 2013 Determining the relative importance of figures in journal articles to find representative images

Henning Müller, Antonio Foncubierta-Rodríguez, Chang Lin, Ivan Eggel

Proceedings Volume 8674, Medical Imaging 2013: Advanced PACS-based Imaging Informatics and Therapeutic Applications; 86740I (2013) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2007843
Event: SPIE Medical Imaging, 2013, Lake Buena Vista (Orlando Area), Florida, United States

Abstract

When physicians are searching for articles in the medical literature, images of the articles can help determining relevance of the article content for a specific information need. The visual image representation can be an advantage in effectiveness (quality of found articles) and also in efficiency (speed of determining relevance or irrelevance) as many articles can likely be excluded much quicker by looking at a few representative images. In domains such as medical information retrieval, allowing to determine relevance quickly and accurately is an important criterion. This becomes even more important when small interfaces are used as it is frequently the case on mobile phones and tablets to access scientific data whenever information needs arise. In scientific articles many figures are used and particularly in the biomedical literature only a subset may be relevant for determining the relevance of a specific article to an information need. In many cases clinical images can be seen as more important for visual appearance than graphs or histograms that require looking at the context for interpretation. To get a clearer idea of image relevance in articles, a user test with a physician was performed who classified images of biomedical research articles into categories of importance that can subsequently be used to evaluate algorithms that automatically select images as representative examples. The manual sorting of images of 50 journal articles of BioMedCentral with each containing more than 8 figures by importance also allows to derive several rules that determine how to choose images and how to develop algorithms for choosing the most representative images of specific texts. This article describes the user tests and can be a first important step to evaluate automatic tools to select representative images for representing articles and potentially also images in other contexts, for example when representing patient records or other medical concepts when selecting images to represent RadLex terms in tutorials or interactive interfaces for example. This can help to make the image retrieval process more efficient and effective for physicians.

Citation Download Citation

Henning Müller, Antonio Foncubierta-Rodríguez, Chang Lin, and Ivan Eggel "Determining the relative importance of figures in journal articles to find representative images", Proc. SPIE 8674, Medical Imaging 2013: Advanced PACS-based Imaging Informatics and Therapeutic Applications, 86740I (29 March 2013); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2007843

ACCESS THE FULL ARTICLE

INSTITUTIONAL
Select your institution to access the SPIE Digital Library.

SELECT YOUR INSTITUTION

PERSONAL
Sign in with your SPIE account to access your personal subscriptions or to use specific features such as save to my library, sign up for alerts, save searches, etc.

PERSONAL SIGN IN

No SPIE Account? Create one

PURCHASE THIS CONTENT

SUBSCRIBE TO DIGITAL LIBRARY

50 downloads per 1-year subscription

Members: $195

Non-members: $335 ADD TO CART

25 downloads per 1 - year subscription

Members: $145

Non-members: $250 ADD TO CART

PURCHASE SINGLE ARTICLE

Includes PDF, HTML & Video, when available