Summary
Objectives: The main objective of this study is to learn more on the image use and search requirements
of radiologists. These requirements will then be taken into account to develop a new
search system for images and associated meta data search in the Khresmoi project.
Methods: Observations of the radiology workflow, case discussions and a literature review
were performed to construct a survey form that was given online and in paper form
to radiologists. Eye tracking was performed on a radiology viewing station to analyze
typical tasks and to complement the survey.
Results: In total 34 radiologists answered the survey online or on paper. Image search was
mentioned as a frequent and common task, particularly for finding cases of interest
for differential diagnosis. Sources of information besides the Internet are books
and discussions with colleagues. Search for images is unsuccessful in around 25% of
the cases, stopping the search after around 10 minutes. The most common reason for
failure is that target images are considered rare. Important additions for search
requested in the survey are filtering by pathology and modality, as well as search
for visually similar images and cases. Few radiologists are familiar with visual retrieval
but they desire the option to upload images for searching similar ones.
Conclusions: Image search is common in radiology but few radiologists are fully aware of visual
information retrieval. Taking into account the many unsuccessful searches and time
spent for this, a good image search could improve the situation and help in clinical
practice.
Keywords
User behavior - survey - image retrieval - radiology
