Isolating and Mitigating Sequentially Dependent Perceptual Errors in Clinical Visual Search

Part of paid clinical trials in Berkeley, California.

Sponsor
University of California, Berkeley
Study ID
NCT04332783
Status
Recruiting
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Conditions

  • Vision

Eligibility Criteria

Sex
ALL
Age
18 Years - N/A
Healthy Volunteers
Accepted

Interventions

  • psychophysics of sequential biases (no drug or patient work) — BEHAVIORAL
    Psychophysical experiment on sequential effects in medical image perception. Observers, including clinicians, perform psychophysical continuous report match-to-sample and forced-choice discrimination judgments of medical images. Observer discrimination accuracy is measured on a trial-wise basis and sequential effects in those judgments are measured. Images can be presented with different interstimulus intervals and in different spatial locations and in different orders. Accuracy, and other signal detection metrics are computed as a function of these factors.

Study Details

Remote-store-and-forward teledermatology has recently grown exponentially in popularity and use as an efficient, accurate, and cost-effective way to improve the health and well-being of countless patients. Despite advances in machine learning and computer vision, the screening and reading of dermatological images still depends on the visual system of human observers (e.g., clinicians), who receive extensive training to best recognize lesions and anomalies. In remote store-and-forward teledermatology settings, clinicians may examine hundreds of images on a daily basis, seeing several images one after the other. A main underlying assumption of their work is that clinician percepts and decisions about a current image are completely independent from prior viewings. However, we and other groups demonstrated that the visual system has visual serial dependencies (VSDs) at many levels, from perception to decision making, including in clinical tasks. These sequential dependencies, replicated hundreds of times in the literature, mean that what was seen in the past influences (and captures) what is seen and reported at this moment. Theoretically, VSDs are helpful in an autocorrelated natural world, but they are suboptimal in visual tasks conducted in artificial situations where images are not always related. Importantly, serial dependencies in perceptual processing could thus produce significant errors during diagnostic judgments of dermatological images. Our central hypothesis is that VSD can have a disruptive effect in asynchronous remote-store-and-forward teledermatology judgments that impairs accurate detection and recognition of lesions. This hypothesis is supported by our robust pilot data, which show that VSD strongly biases lesion classification in both untrained observers and expert clinicians. The rationale for the proposed research projects is that once it is known how serial dependence arises and how it impacts judgments, we can understand how to control for it. Hence, accuracy of lesion detection and diagnosis can significantly improve. The specific objectives of this proposal are to establish (Aim 1), identify (Aim 2) and mitigate (Aim 3) the impact of VSD on remote-store-and-forward dermatological judgments.

Key Dates

Start date
Apr 1, 2019
Status verified
Jan 2026
Primary completion
Jun 30, 2031
Completion
Oct 30, 2032

Study Design

Enrollment
10,120 participants (estimated)
Allocation
RANDOMIZED
Intervention model
SINGLE_GROUP
Primary purpose
BASIC_SCIENCE

Arms

  • Experimental: Healthy Typical Adults
    Observers including clinicians and non-clinicians will be asked to participate in computer based tasks in which they visually search for, detect, localize, and categorize medical images.
  • Experimental: Healthy typical adults
    Observers including clinicians and non-clinicians will be asked to participate in computer based tasks in which they visually search for, detect, localize, and categorize medical images.

Primary Outcome Measure

Serial Dependence Assessment using psychophysical procedures [ Time Frame: Each participant is tested for 30-60 minutes in a psychophysical experiment. ]

Central Contacts

Locations (1)

FacilityCityStateZIPSite coordinators
University of California, BerkeleyBerkeleyCalifornia94720
Valerie Ekko, BA
[email protected]
510 642-5797

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By research site
University of California, Berkeley· Berkeley, CA

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