A mouse-tracking study on visualization of panoramic radiographs among Oral & Maxillofacial Radiology faculty

Panoramic radiographs (PANs) are a commonly used dental imaging modality and are complex to evaluate. This study aimed to use mouse-tracking technology to identify the visualization characteristics of experienced Oral & Maxillofacial Radiology (OMR) faculty when reviewing PANs and to assess relationships with detection accuracy.

Seventeen OMR faculty in US dental schools with 5 to 38 years of experience were recruited. Participants were shown 17 PANs (5 "Normal" and 12 "Pathology") over Zoom and instructed to move their mouse cursor in sync with their eye movements. Data collection was based on video recordings with X, Y coordinates auto-detected using mouse-tracking algorithms. Parameters collected included detection accuracy, time taken, completeness of search coverage, revisits and search patterns used.

Most common search patterns were Dental to Periphery (41.5%) and Periphery to Dental (37.7%). The mean accuracy score for all cases with pathology was 84.8%. Except for 2 cases with subtle findings (condylar fracture and fibrous dysplasia), mean accuracy scores ranged from 76.5% to 100%. There were no associations between search patterns and detection accuracy. Participants took longer durations and performed more complete searches with more revisits on "Normal" cases. They were more likely to use shorter search times with smaller coverage and perform single searches when correctly detecting lesions.

Experienced OMRs were able to detect lesions without scanning the entire PAN and within a single search, regardless of the search pattern used.

This is the first study using mouse-tracking algorithms to evaluate visualization characteristics on PANs. Experienced OMRs can conduct efficient and accurate reviews of PANs regardless of search strategy.