This report originally appeared in the May 2011 issue of DOTmed Business News

Anyone who has ever watched an intense tennis match likely noticed the players weren’t the only ones getting exercise. The people in the crowd, especially those in line with the net, get into the action too – their heads turning back and forth as if incredibly disappointed about something. But of course, they’re taking in information and going through physical motions to do so. Now, if someone were to study how the crowd watched a match and processed what they were watching and then was able to develop ways to make it easier and more effective, in essence, they’d be carrying out research similar to what The Society for Imaging Informatics in Medicine’s current chair, Elizabeth Krupinski, does – minus the crowd and the tennis.

Krupinski is an experimental psychologist, meaning she studies how clinicians, such as radiologists, pathologists, ophthalmologists or other professionals dealing with a medical image, look at and interpret the information in order to render a diagnostic decision. Only a small number of professionals carry out this research, yet the need for it is growing at an astounding rate. Krupinski recently talked to DOTmed News about her field and the latest news from SIIM.

DMBN: So can you tell us a little about your background and more about what an experimental psychologist does?

Krupinski: I’ve been in radiology research since 1987. That was at a time when radiology was just beginning the transition from film to digital. That transition has had some interesting impact on clinical decision making and my background as an experimental psychologist has helped me to identify some of those effects.

Studying an image is all about visual perception and cognition and when you think about changes between film and digital, all of that comes into play — once you take an image from a piece of film and put it on a computer monitor, it’s totally different. The information is displayed in a different way and that creates a different environment in a sense, or a different set of information for the clinician to render a decision on. So my studies started out investigating how radiologists in particular made that transition from film to digital. Were they able to maintain diagnostic accuracy? Were problems arising?

DMBN: What kind of problems were appearing?

Krupinski: One of the problems I saw was that they were having trouble navigating around the images when they were looking at them in digital environs. It’s not the same as having a bunch of films sitting in front of you where all you need to do is look at them and then press a switch with your foot to get to the next ones. A new way of navigating had to be learned. Moving the mouse around, reading menus and so on — there’s just a lot more information to contend with. So, that’s how I became involved in imaging informatics and SIIM, since that’s what the society is all about. In this context, it looks at imaging all the way from the acquisition and distribution of images to the management, storage, retrieval, image processing and analysis.

DMBN: So it was a natural fit for you to work with SIIM with that being your background.

Krupinski: Exactly. Years ago, I was invited to participate on a panel at one of the meetings. I was asked to talk about how display of information affects the interpretation of that information.

DMBN: How long have you been a member of the society and what compelled you to take a leadership role?

Krupinski: I’ve been with SIIM since 1995 and as for my leadership role, I saw a need within the society for a perspective most people don’t have. Many of our members are radiologists, PACS administrators and technologically oriented people. But I can count on two hands the number of people that do what I do. So, I volunteered for various committees and certain short courses at the meeting and so on. The more I did, the more opportunities emerged. It just ended up at one point that I was asked to take on a larger leadership role.

DMBN: What are your goals as chair for the society?

Krupinski: I have two major goals. The first deals with the electronic health record initiative. In an ideal world, all the different systems would talk to each other and information would be communicated from one system to another. But the initial mandates did not include imaging or images. In a sense, how can you have an electronic patient record without images? How on earth is it going to be incorporated if nobody is thinking about it?

So that’s the first part, to work with some federal agencies to find out what it would take to get images into the program at an earlier stage. I think SIIM is ideally poised to do that because that’s imaging informatics — our field.
My second goal is to spread the word about imaging informatics in general and to bring in a new generation of people into the society and into imaging informatics in general. We’d like to attract radiology residents, pathology residents — people dealing with images on a daily basis. But we’re also looking at the engineers, the Ph.D.s, more people from my field too, to get involved, do research projects and spread the word to the scientific community.

DMBN: And your conference is coming up. Is there anything you’re particularly excited about?

Krupinski: The whole meeting is exciting to me. It’s exciting because of the combination of purely educational tracks and scientific tracks. It’s possible to go from one session where you’re learning something practical and hands on to another presenting state-of-the-art research about what’s going on in the field.

One thing we introduced last year that received a great response was — if you remember Lucy from the Peanuts comics with her little “the doctor is in” psychiatry booth — we have a little booth staged in half-hour intervals by experts in the field. Attendees can come up to them with problems they’re encountering at their hospital and find solutions.

DMBN: Do you have any advice to offer someone interested in getting involved with SIIM?

Krupinski: My best advice is to attend a meeting. You don’t have to be a member of the society to attend the meeting. But don’t just go to the sessions, take your notes and go back to your hotel room. Stand up, interact and ask questions. Generally, just be an active participant. There’s a wide variety of formats at the meeting – not just lectures and going to scientific sessions. You’ll have a variety of options that will allow you to interact with people who are in the field and have extensive experience. If you can’t attend the meeting, visit the website. We offer podcasts explaining what imaging informatics is about, news updates, blogs, you’ll find a lot of information.
Beyond that, I would recommend if you have an area of expertise to share, be a presenter. Once you become a presenter, you gain the attention of the organizing committees and governing committees of the society. From that, you may be invited to become part of an educational course. So it’s attend, interact and volunteer.