Understanding Search and Decision Errors in Liver Metastasis Detection and the Effects of Lower Radiation Dose
Abstract
The detection performance of liver metastases decreases with the reduction of radiation dose, but misses are heterogeneous. Previous eye tracking work has characterized missed metastases into two categories: search errors i.e., the eyes never land on the lesion, and decision errors i.e., the lesion is seen but not recognized as malignant. We integrated three prior reader studies to answer this question. In all studies, radiologists interpreted the same set of 40 contrast enhanced abdominal CT exams containing 91 liver metastases whose locations had been previously marked. In two studies, the workstation recorded their gaze and eye movements. Using eye dwell times, metastases were classified as search-error-dominant (majority of misses had <2 sec gaze time) or decision-error-dominant (>2 sec gaze time). In the third study, exams were interpreted both at 120 and 200 quality reference mAs (QRM) by ten radiologists. The third study did not include eye tracking. Out of 91 liver metastases, we excluded 16 that were never missed in the eye tracking studies and used 75 liver metastases for the present study.
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BibTeX
@misc{mondal2026understanding,
title = {{Understanding Search and Decision Errors in Liver Metastasis Detection and the Effects of Lower Radiation Dose}},
author = {Parmita Mondal and Rickey Carter and Andrew D Missert and Akitoshi Inoue and Joel G. Fletcher and Hao Gong and Shuai Leng and Lifeng Yu and Cynthia H. McCollough and Scott S. Hsieh},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = sep,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2609.10458},
eprint = {2609.10458},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.10458},
note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Understanding Search and Decision Errors in Liver Metastasis Detection and the Effects of Lower Radiation Dose
AU - Parmita Mondal
AU - Rickey Carter
AU - Andrew D Missert
AU - Akitoshi Inoue
AU - Joel G. Fletcher
AU - Hao Gong
AU - Shuai Leng
AU - Lifeng Yu
AU - Cynthia H. McCollough
AU - Scott S. Hsieh
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/09/09
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2609.10458
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.10458
AB - The detection performance of liver metastases decreases with the reduction of radiation dose, but misses are heterogeneous. Previous eye tracking work has characterized missed metastases into two categories: search errors i.e., the eyes never land on the lesion, and decision errors i.e., the lesion is seen but not recognized as malignant. We integrated three prior reader studies to answer this question. In all studies, radiologists interpreted the same set of 40 contrast enhanced abdominal CT exams containing 91 liver metastases whose locations had been previously marked. In two studies, the workstation recorded their gaze and eye movements. Using eye dwell times, metastases were classified as search-error-dominant (majority of misses had <2 sec gaze time) or decision-error-dominant (>2 sec gaze time). In the third study, exams were interpreted both at 120 and 200 quality reference mAs (QRM) by ten radiologists. The third study did not include eye tracking. Out of 91 liver metastases, we excluded 16 that were never missed in the eye tracking studies and used 75 liver metastases for the present study.
ER -