Dissonance Between Law Courts and the Science of Visual Perception in Medical Imaging

Lawsuits for spending too little time interpreting each radiological image are a vexatious charge to level against a radiologist in medical malpractice court. In this article, we recount two medicolegal cases where the defendant radiologists were accused of missing a life-threatening diagnosis due to not spending enough time reviewing each image. We consider the literature in vision sciences, visual perception in radiology and interpretive biases to demonstrate that using reading speed as evidence of negligence in a malpractice court represents in incorrect understanding of how radiologists perceive images, including three-dimensional volumetric studies.