Perceptual training to improve hip fracture identification in conventional radiographs

Abstract

Diagnosing certain fractures in conventional radiographs can be a difficult task, usually taking years to master. Typically, students are trained ad-hoc, in a primarily-rule based fashion. Our study investigated whether students can more rapidly learn to diagnose proximal neck of femur fractures via perceptual training, without having to learn an explicit set of rules. One hundred and thirty-nine students with no prior medical or radiology training were shown a sequence of plain film X-ray images of the right hip and for each image were asked to indicate whether a fracture was present. Students were told if they were correct and the location of any fracture, if present. No other feedback was..