Evaluation of six channelized Hotelling observers in combination with a contrast sensitivity function to predict human observer performance

Marco Goffi; Wouter J. H. Veldkamp; Ruben E van Engen; Ramona W. Bouwman

doi:10.1117/12.2081528

17 March 2015 Evaluation of six channelized Hotelling observers in combination with a contrast sensitivity function to predict human observer performance

Marco Goffi, Wouter J. H. Veldkamp, Ruben E van Engen, Ramona W. Bouwman

Author Affiliations +

Proceedings Volume 9416, Medical Imaging 2015: Image Perception, Observer Performance, and Technology Assessment; 94160Z (2015) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2081528
Event: SPIE Medical Imaging, 2015, Orlando, Florida, United States

Abstract

Standard methods to quantify image quality (IQ) may not be adequate for clinical images since they depend on uniform backgrounds and linearity. Statistical model observers are not restricted to these limitations and might be suitable for IQ evaluation of clinical images. One of these statistical model observers is the channelized Hotelling observer (CHO), where the images are filtered by a set of channels. The aim of this study was to evaluate six different channel sets, with an additional filter to simulate the human contrast sensitivity function (CSF), in their ability to predict human observer performance. For this evaluation a two alternative forced choice experiment was performed with two types of background structures (white noise (WN) and clustered lumpy background (CLB)), 5 disk-shaped objects with different diameters and 3 different signal energies. The results show that the correlation between human and model observers have a diameter dependency for some channel sets in combination with CLBs. The addition of the CSF reduces this diameter dependency and in some cases improves the correlation coefficient between human- and model observer. For the CLB the Partial Least Squares channel set shows the highest correlation with the human observer (r²=0.71) and for WN backgrounds it was the Gabor-channel set with CSF (r²=0.72). This study showed that for some channels there is a high correlation between human and model observer, which suggests that the CHO has potential as a tool for IQ analysis of digital mammography systems.

Citation Download Citation

Marco Goffi, Wouter J. H. Veldkamp, Ruben E van Engen, and Ramona W. Bouwman "Evaluation of six channelized Hotelling observers in combination with a contrast sensitivity function to predict human observer performance", Proc. SPIE 9416, Medical Imaging 2015: Image Perception, Observer Performance, and Technology Assessment, 94160Z (17 March 2015); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2081528

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