In dental medicine, interpreting radiographs (i.e., orthopantomograms, OPTs) is an error-prone process, even in experts. Effective intervention methods are therefore needed to support students in improving their image reading skills for OPTs. To this end, we developed a compare-and-contrast intervention, which aimed at supporting students in achieving full coverage when visually inspecting OPTs and, consequently, obtaining a better diagnostic performance. The comparison entailed a static eye movement visualization (heat map) on an OPT showing full gaze coverage from a peer-model (other student) and another heat map showing a student’s own gaze behavior. The intervention group ( N = 38) compared five such heat map combinations, whereas the control group ( N = 23) diagnosed five OPTs. Prior to the experimental variation (pre-test) and after it (post-test), students in both conditions searched for anomalies in OPTs while their gaze was recorded. Results showed that students in the intervention group covered more areas of the OPTs and looked less often and for a shorter amount of time at anomalies after the intervention. Furthermore, they fixated on low-prevalence anomalies earlier and high-prevalence anomalies later during the inspection. However, the students in the intervention group did not show any meaningful improvement in detection rate and made more false positive errors compared to the control group. Thus, the intervention guided visual attention but did not improve diagnostic performance substantially. Exploratory analyses indicated that further interventions should teach knowledge about anomalies rather than focusing on full coverage of radiographs.

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如何支持牙科学生阅读 X 光片：基于凝视的比较和对比干预的效果

在牙科医学中，即使是专家，解读 X 光片（即正畸断层照片，OPT）也是一个容易出错的过程。因此，需要有效的干预方法来支持学生提高 OPT 的图像阅读技能。为此，我们开发了一种比较和对比干预，旨在支持学生在目视检查 OPT 时实现全面覆盖，从而获得更好的诊断性能。比较需要在 OPT 上进行静态眼动可视化（热图），显示来自同龄人模型（其他学生）的完整凝视覆盖范围和另一个显示学生自己凝视行为的热图。干预组 (N = 38) 比较了五个这样的热图组合，而对照组 (N = 23) 诊断出五个 OPT。在实验变化之前（前测）和之后（后测），两种情况下的学生在记录他们的注视时搜索 OPT 中的异常。结果表明，干预组的学生覆盖了更多的 OPT 区域，并且在干预后观察异常的频率和时间较短。此外，他们在检查期间更早地关注低流行率异常和高流行率异常。然而，与对照组相比，干预组的学生在检出率方面没有表现出任何有意义的提高，并且出现了更多的假阳性错误。因此，干预引导了视觉注意力，但并没有显着提高诊断性能。