Evaluation of Interaction Techniques for a Virtual Reality Reading Room in Diagnostic Radiology

Today, radiologists diagnose three dimensional medical data using two dimensional displays. When designing environments with optimal conditions for such a process various aspects like contrast, screen reflection and background light have to be considered. As shown in previous research, applying virtual environments in combination with a Head-Mounted Display for diagnostic imaging provides potential benefits to reduce issues of bad posture and diagnostic mistakes. However, there is little research in exploring the usability and user experience of such beneficial environments. In this work we designed and evaluated different means of interaction to increase radiologists' performance. Therefore we created a virtual reality radiology reading room and employed it to evaluate three different interaction techniques. These allow a direct, semi-direct and indirect manipulation for performing scrolling- and windowing- tasks which are the most important for a radiologist. A study including nine radiologists was conducted and evaluated using the User Experience Questionnaire. Results indicate that direct manipulation is the preferred interaction technique, it outscored the other two control possibilities in attractiveness and pragmatic quality.