Knowledge transfer from experts to novices in minimally invasive catheter-mediated (MIC) interventions, eye-tracking study

Abstract

Minimally invasive catheter-mediated (MIC) interventions represent a key approach to treat patients with a wide range of cardiovascular diseases; the operators' performance rely on his or her ability to read the dynamic (cine, fluoroscopy) and static x-rays images rapidly, and accurately. Here, we demonstrate the feasibility of expertise transfer employing a low cost eye tracking system for experts gaze visualization in real-life (MIC) interventional scenario. As the video quality from head-mounted eye tracker is not sufficient for data analysis, due to head-movement, dark shades, blurring, etc., therefore we have developed an automatic method for mapping the recorded gaze from the eye-tracker video to high quality x-ray video, allowing for tracking of the complete visual perception of individual operators throughout the life performance of individual interventions based on high resolution image recordings. The high quality gaze video from an expert doctors provide an important educational resource to teach novices how to read the dynamic x-ray images.