Designing better radiology workstations: impact of two user interfaces on interpretation errors and user satisfaction.

This paper presents our solution for supporting radiologists' interpretation of digital images by automating image presentation during sequential interpretation steps. We extended current hanging protocols with support for "stages" which reflect the presentation of digital information required to complete a single step within a complex task. We demonstrated the benefits of staging in a user experiment with 20 lay subjects involved in a comparative visual search for targets, similar to a radiology task of identifying anatomical abnormalities. We designed a task and a set of stimuli that allowed us to simulate the interpretation workflow from a typical radiology scenario-reading a chest radiography exam when a prior study is also available. The simulation was enabled by abstracting both the radiologist's task and the basic workstation navigation functionality. The staged interface was significantly faster than the traditional user interface, provided a 37% reduction in the interpretation errors, and improved user satisfaction.