Patent ID: 7873196

Claim:
A method for using a visibility index for medical images, the method comprising: performing a plurality of reader studies on a set of training images to assign a training visibility score to each member of the set of training images, to build a set of training visibility scores; operating a processor to map the set of training visibility scores to a visibility index so that the visibility index is derived from the plurality of reader studies, wherein the visibility index has a range including a portion corresponding to typical radiologist performance so as to allow an objective determination as to whether a particular abnormality on a particular image was reasonably missed by a reader; operating a processor for making a number of measurements of a set of features from an image of a selected abnormality that is not a member of the training set; and operating a processor for combining the number of measurements and to generate an assigned visibility score mapped to the visibility index where the assigned visibility score's mapping to the visibility index determines whether the selected abnormality was reasonably missed by a reader.