PORTFOLIO - A PROTOTYPE WORKSTATION FOR DEVELOPMENT AND EVALUATION OFTOOLS FOR ANALYSIS AND MANAGEMENT OF DIGITAL PORTAL IMAGES

Purpose: The purpose of this investigation was to design and implement a prototype physician workstation, called Portfolio, as a platform fo r developing and evaluating, by means of controlled observer studies, user interfaces and interactive tools for analyzing and managing digit al portal images. The first observer study was designed to measure phy sician acceptance of workstation technology, as an alternative to a vi ew box, for inspection and analysis of portal images for detection of treatment setup errors. Methods and Materials: The observer study was conducted in a controlled experimental setting to evaluate physician a cceptance of the prototype workstation technology exemplified by Portf olio. Portfolio incorporates a windows user interface, a compact kit o f carefully selected image analysis tools, and an object-oriented data base infrastructure. The kit evaluated in the observer study included tools for contrast enhancement, registration, and multimodal image vi sualization. Acceptance was measured in the context of performing port al image analysis in a structured protocol designed to simulate clinic al practice, The acceptability and usage patterns were measured from s emistructured questionnaires and logs of user interactions. Results: R adiation oncologists, the subjects for this study, perceived the tools in Portfolio to be acceptable clinical aids. Concerns were expressed regarding user efficiency, particularly with respect to the image regi stration tools. Conclusions: The results of our observer study indicat e that workstation technology is acceptable to radiation oncologists a s an alternative to a view box for clinical detection of setup errors from digital portal images. Improvements in implementation, including more tools and a greater degree of automation in the image analysis ta sks, are needed to make Portfolio more clinically practical. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science Inc.