Pigeons (Columba livia) as Trainable Observers of Pathology and Radiology Breast Cancer Images.

ABSTRACT: Pathologists and radiologists spend years acquiring and refining their medically essential visual skills, so it is of considerable interest to understand how this process actually unfolds and what image features and properties are critical for accurate diagnostic performance. Key insights into human behavioral tasks can often be obtained by using appropriate animal models. We report here that pigeons (Columba livia)-which share many visual system properties with humans-can serve as promising surrogate observers of medical images, a capability not previously documented. The birds proved to have a remarkable ability to distinguish benign from malignant human breast histopathology after training with differential food reinforcement; even more importantly, the pigeons were able to generalize w

SUBMITTER: Levenson RM 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4651348 | biostudies-literature | 2015

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature