State of the art in the task-based assessment of medical imaging systems

Abstract

Image Science provides a framework for the task-based assessment of image quality. This framework has been used to support the evaluation of medical imaging system hardware, iterative reconstruction algorithms and other image processing methods, and display devices by academia, industry, and US FDA. Since the earliest instances of the SPIE Medical Imaging Symposium the conference has served as an essential venue for presentations and discussions related to the objective assessment of image quality, featuring first disclosures of new models for physiological backgrounds and pathologies, tools for simulating medical imaging systems, models for the human and Bayesian observer, and methods for computing task-based figures of merit. This paper highlights recent advances in the objective or task-based assessment of image quality through the use of computational models and methods, and points to new initiatives intended to develop resources to move this important field forward.