Does “See One and Do One” Work in Histology?: A Two‐Phase Cross‐Over Eye Tracking Study on Complex Histological Pattern Recognition Skills Acquisition

Abstract

Histology, the study of tissues, is a visual subject that requires competency in pattern recognition. Histology education has evolved over the past several decades, driven by both the advent of technology like virtual microscopy and curricular changes in medical education which have significantly reduced classroom contact hours. As a result, much histology education now occurs in integrated curricula and uses a virtual platform to teach pattern recognition. Although the many advantages of virtual microscopy have been well documented, few studies have investigated how students acquire pattern recognition skills in histology. In a previous eye‐tracking study using simple blood smear visual fields, feedforward training – seeing how an expert scans a visual field to identify leukocyte types – seemed to help students gain visual literacy more efficiently, as evidenced by increased average fixation duration (eyes lingering on visually salient areas) and decreased scan path distance (less eye roaming). Expanding on this work, the goal of the current study was to investigate the educational efficacy of feedforward training in histology with much more complex systemic tissue images, containing significantly more visually salient regions and distractors. In a two‐phase cross‐over design, first year graduate students in a histology course were randomized into two groups: Group A and Group B. In the first phase, Group A was exposed to feedforward training with gastrointestinal tract tissue images over which an expert's eye scan paths were displayed, while Group B, as a control group, viewed the same series of tissue images but without the expert's scan paths. In the second phase, Group B was exposed to feedforward training with lymphatic system tissue images with the expert eye scan paths, while Group A served as the control group. In both phases, all other visual content, exposure time, and data collection tools were identical between the two groups. Participants were tasked to identify various organs or regions from series of relevant tissue images. During these tasks, participants' eye movements were recorded and analyzed to calculate identification accuracy and speed, and fixation number and duration. A total of 1848 data sets were collected following COMIRB No. 17‐1324 protocol and analyzed using MATLAB. Preliminary results reveal no significant differences in identification accuracy (t= −1.0914, p= 0.28808), identification speed (t= 0.18468, p= 0.85534), fixation number (t= 0.49266, p= 0.62762), or fixation duration (t=0.36483, p= 0.71906) between the experimental and control groups. The current study suggests that with more complex histological visual fields, the educational impact of feedforward training may be attenuated, and suggests a revised feedforward mechanism or alternate educational modalities for histology education should be explored.This abstract is from the Experimental Biology 2019 Meeting. There is no full text article associated with this abstract published in The FASEB Journal.