GazeXPErT: An Expert Eye-tracking Dataset for Interpretable and Explainable AI in Oncologic FDG-PET/CT Scans

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Authors: Joy Tzung-Yu Wu, Daniel Beckmann, Sarah M. Miller, Alexander Lee, Elizabeth Theng, Stephan Altmayer, Ken Chang, David Kersting, Tomoaki Otani, Brittany Zadek Dashevsky, Hye Lim Park, Matteo Novello
+6 more Kip E. Guja, Curtis P. Langlotz, Ismini Lourentzou, Daniel Gruhl, Benjamin Risse, Guido Davidzon
Cited by: 0
References: 2

Abstract

[18F]FDG-PET/CT is a cornerstone imaging modality for guiding oncology therapies, yet human expert shortages necessitate more efficient diagnostic aids. While standalone AI models for automatic lesion detection exist, clinical translation remains hindered by AI explainability, reliability, and workflow integration. Meanwhile, human-computer-interaction in radiology remain limited to keyboard, mouse and voice, ignoring experts' faster, natural gaze signal. We present GazeXPErT, a 4D eye-tracking dataset with annotated expert decision windows for tumor detection and measurement on 346 dual-read FDG-PET/CTs. The dataset contributes 9,030 gaze-to-lesion trajectories derived from 3,948 minutes of 60 Hz eye-tracking data, rendered in COCO-style format. GazeXPErT captures experts' visual reasoning patterns when adjudicating suspicious lesions. It aims to facilitate development of trusted, explainable and interactive AI models through understanding expert gaze patterns. Baseline feasibility experiments suggest salient signal is extractable from routinely collected expert gaze (3D nnU-Net Dice: 0.6819 versus 0.6008 without), that gaze-trained vision transformers may aid dynamic lesion localization (74.95% predicted gaze closer to tumor), and that experts' intent may be predictable from raw gaze (Accuracy 67.53%, AUROC 0.747).

Fields of Study & Subjects

Gaze Tracking and Assistive Technology Visual Attention and Saliency Detection Explainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI)

Publication details

Journal / source
arXiv (Cornell University)
Publication date
26 February 2026
Language
EN
Document type
Preprint