Reducing Affective Responses to Surgical Images and Videos Through Stylization

Abstract

We present the first empirical study on using colour manipulation and stylization to make surgery images/videos more palatable. While aversion to such material is natural, it limits many people's ability to satisfy their curiosity, educate themselves and make informed decisions. We selected a diverse set of image processing techniques to test them both on surgeons and lay people. While colour manipulation techniques and many artistic methods were found unusable by surgeons, edge‐preserving image smoothing yielded good results both for preserving information (as judged by surgeons) and reducing repulsiveness (as judged by lay people). We then conducted a second set of interview with surgeons to assess whether these methods could also be used on videos and derive good default parameters for information preservation. We provide extensive supplemental material at https://osf.io/4pfes/.

EEG-Based Estimation on the Reduction of Negative Emotions for Illustrated Surgical Images

“…This limitation of this study can be addressed in two points. Similar studies [ 2 , 3 ] hired a small group of surgeons to confirm that the illustrated surgical images could be used for communication and education. In another point, we collected a series of opinions from a surgeon for the illustrative surgical images in Section 7.4 .…”

“…Some studies have tried to reduce impact of the image by simplifying the color of the images through image abstraction schemes [ 2 , 3 ]. They employed existing image abstraction techniques on surgical images to produce illustrated expressions in order to reduce the negative affective responses.…”

“…Before undertaking such an effort, we need objective evidence that the illustrated surgical images can reduce the severity of negative emotional reactions to photographic surgical images. Unfortunately, the works of Besancon et al’s [ 2 , 3 ] lack such an evidence, as they did not include quantitative study such as EEG-based emotion measurement on the emotional reactions comparing abstracted surgical images from original images.…”

Data Knitualization: An Exploration of Knitting as a Visualization Medium

“…In a way, this makes a medical concept where a realistic representation can elicit a strong negative response more approachable. Perhaps it is similar to how surgical images can be made more palatable by using color manipulation and stylization [2]. While this pattern was originally intended as an interesting Valentine's day gift knit, it could be used for other purposes.…”

Benchmarking non-photorealistic rendering of portraits

“…Image-based non-photorealistic rendering (NPR) is at the intersection of computer graphics and computer vision, and has the aim of synthesising new images based on the analysis of existing images 1 . NPR can be applied in many different ways, such as: the rendering of CAD models of furniture and interior designs as watercolour style illustrations to provide more appealing renderings for sales brochures [1], stylising images to different degrees to provide stimuli for perceptual studies investigating the theory of mind [2], stylising images to reduce patients' aversion to otherwise unpleasant pictures of surgical procedures [3], and image enhancement prior to generating 3D bas-reliefs in order to emphasise salient structures and reduce noise and visual clutter [4]. NPR can be applied to images, video, and 3D models, but in this paper we will focus on imagebased NPR, and in particular the rendering of portrait images, which is also known as portrait image stylisation.…”