Visual adaptation to medical images: a comparison of digital mammography and tomosynthesis

Mohana Kuppuswamy Parthasarathy; Margarita L. Zuley; Andriy I. Bandos; Craig K. Abbey; Michael A. Webster

doi:10.1117/1.JMI.10.S1.S11909

25 April 2023 Visual adaptation to medical images: a comparison of digital mammography and tomosynthesis

Mohana Kuppuswamy Parthasarathy, Margarita L. Zuley, Andriy I. Bandos, Craig K. Abbey, Michael A. Webster

Author Affiliations +

Journal of Medical Imaging, Vol. 10, Issue S1, S11909 (April 2023). https://doi.org/10.1117/1.JMI.10.S1.S11909

Abstract

Purpose

Radiologists and other image readers spend prolonged periods inspecting medical images. The visual system can rapidly adapt or adjust sensitivity to the images that an observer is currently viewing, and previous studies have demonstrated that this can lead to pronounced changes in the perception of mammogram images. We compared these adaptation effects for images from different imaging modalities to explore both general and modality-specific consequences of adaptation in medical image perception.

Approach

We measured perceptual changes induced by adaptation to images acquired by digital mammography (DM) or digital breast tomosynthesis (DBT), which have both similar and distinct textural properties. Participants (nonradiologists) adapted to images from the same patient acquired from each modality or for different patients with American College of Radiology—Breast Imaging Reporting and Data System (BI-RADS) classification of dense or fatty tissue. The participants then judged the appearance of composite images formed by blending the two adapting images (i.e., DM versus DBT or dense versus fatty in each modality).

Results

Adaptation to either modality produced similar significant shifts in the perception of dense and fatty textures, reducing the salience of the adapted component in the test images. In side-by-side judgments, a modality-specific adaptation effect was not observed. However, when the images were directly fixated during adaptation and testing, so that the textural differences between the modalities were more visible, significantly different changes in the sensitivity to the noise in the images were observed.

Conclusions

These results confirm that observers can readily adapt to the visual properties or spatial textures of medical images in ways that can bias their perception of the images, and that adaptation can also be selective for the distinctive visual features of images acquired by different modalities.

Citation Download Citation

Mohana Kuppuswamy Parthasarathy, Margarita L. Zuley, Andriy I. Bandos, Craig K. Abbey, and Michael A. Webster "Visual adaptation to medical images: a comparison of digital mammography and tomosynthesis," Journal of Medical Imaging 10(S1), S11909 (25 April 2023). https://doi.org/10.1117/1.JMI.10.S1.S11909

Received: 28 December 2022; Accepted: 10 April 2023; Published: 25 April 2023

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

Members: $24.00

Non-members: $28.00 ADD TO CART

JOURNAL ARTICLE
13 PAGES

DOWNLOAD PAPER SAVE TO MY LIBRARY

GET CITATION

RIGHTS & PERMISSIONS

Get copyright permission Get copyright permission on Copyright Marketplace

KEYWORDS

Medical imaging

Digital breast tomosynthesis

Visualization

Digital mammography

Digital imaging

Image processing

Breast

Purpose

Approach

Results

Conclusions

Show All Keywords

Keywords/Phrases

Search In:

Publication Years