Gaining insight: improved images enhance understanding.

Abstract

The past several decades have witnessed dramatic advances in the technology of image acquisition and display. There have been some parallel but less spectacular advances in understanding human acquisition and analysis of visual information. For the first time, imaging devices are available that allow the operator to determine the brightness relationships between normal and pathologic structures. For the first time too, it is becoming possible for the community of scientists interested in medical imaging to marry knowledge of human observer performance with the capabilities of the modern display devices to permit maximum information extraction from medical images.