Eye Tracking Technology as an Adjunct in Medical Education: Our Experience at the National Paediatric Craniofacial Centre in Ireland.

Abstract

Eye-tracking Technology (ETT) measures an individual's eye movements to reflect their attentional behavior. Medicine and surgery are highly visual disciplines, with health care professionals (HCPs) processing visual information in the diagnosis of many conditions, including craniosynostosis. ETT has been applied to the clinical setting in many ways, including in the training and assessment of HCPs. The authors' objectives are to design an education session for HCPs to identify abnormal head shapes associated with non-syndromic craniosynostosis, while utilizing ETT as a learning assessment tool. HCPs and student HCPs were recruited. The Tobii Pro Nano eye tracker was used with iMotions software. Photographs of patients with non-syndromic craniosynostosis were shown, and participants were asked to analyze each photograph for features of craniosynostosis while being monitored by ETT. Participants then attended an education session delivered by a consultant craniofacial surgeon. After the session, participants were shown a different set of photographs of patients with non-syndromic craniosynostosis while being monitored by ETT. Their performance before and after the education session was compared by performing Wilcoxon Signed-Rank tests for several area of interest (AOI) metrics. Seven participants took part in our eye-tracking study. Statistical analysis of AOI metrics revealed that participants improved in several metrics after attending the educational session, including mean dwell count and mean revisit count. The authors' results demonstrate that ETT was a useful adjunct in objectively assessing the effectiveness of their education session. The authors' study is the first to demonstrate the effectiveness of ETT as an educational adjunct in craniofacial conditions.