Diagnostic radiologists are experts in discriminating and classifying medical images for clinically significant anomalies. Does their perceptual expertise confer an advantage in unfamiliar visual tasks? Here, this issue was investigated by comparing the performance of 10 radiologists and 2 groups of novices on the ability to detect novel visual signals: band-limited textures in noise. Observers performed a yes/no detection task in which texture spatial frequency and external noise levels were varied. The task was performed on two consecutive days. Contrast thresholds and response bias were measured. Contrast thresholds of radiologists were superior to the control groups in all stimulus conditions on both days. Performance improved by an equivalent amount for all groups across days. Response bias differed consistently across stimulus conditions and days but not across groups. The difference in thresholds between the radiologists and control groups suggests that experience in diagnostic medical imaging produces perceptual skills that that transfer beyond the trained domain.

诊断放射科医生是区分和分类医学图像以发现临床显着异常的专家。他们的感知专业知识是否在不熟悉的视觉任务中具有优势？在这里，通过比较 10 名放射科医生和 2 组新手在检测新颖视觉信号（噪声中的带限纹理）的能力方面的表现来研究这个问题。观察者执行是/否检测任务，其中纹理空间频率和外部噪声水平是变化的。该任务连续两天执行。测量了对比度阈值和反应偏差。在这两天的所有刺激条件下，放射科医生的对比度阈值均优于对照组。所有组在几天内的表现都有同等程度的提高。反应偏差在刺激条件和刺激天数之间始终存在差异，但在不同组别之间没有差异。放射科医生和对照组之间阈值的差异表明，诊断医学成像的经验产生的感知技能超出了训练的领域。