Welcome to the field of medical device development (user interface sub-specialization)!
Your mission, should you choose to accept it, will be to become over time a technical domain expert so that you have an intuitive understanding of the work and workflow that the user's of the device need to do. Some times there are more than one type of user: Technologist doing acquisitions, Radiologist doing diagnosis, Physicist doing imaging research or post-processing, others... There is a multi-discipline team involved, and each different type of user needs their view/perspective supported in the user interface.
Find out who the different types of users are, focus on each type, one at a time, they are all your customers (e.g. if you are working on acquisition user interface, learn from and observe technologists - walk a mile in their shoes); also learn from talk to the Physicists/Engineers developing the acquisition techniques. ;-)
How is a typical MRI scanning performed from a user interface (i.e., a practical) viewpoint? I guess what I am thinking about here is the equipment seen as an apparatus with operators and operational concerns (safety, efficiency, effectiveness, operating procedures, etc.)
This is a complex question grasshopper... ;-)
You will need to learn "the language" of MRI, enough so you may communicate more efficiently with the community. Perhaps read the user's guide for some MRI devices (to familiarize yourself with the tasks), then watch users, try it yourself..., consider buying books like: "MRI Made Easy (for Beginners), Govind B. Chavhan, JAYPEE BROTHERS MEDICAL PUBLISHERS, New Delhi".
How is the image data that is generated used by doctors - both in radiology and other departments? Again mainly from a user interface or data sharing point of view.
Diagnosticians never just view individual Images, they look at complete Studies, composed of multiple Series/Acquisitions, displayed in multiple view ports (each with stacks of images), simultaneously. In general, a Radiologist is always comparing "the" current Study to "the" relevant prior Studies. All relevant information from the EMR/RIS should also be available at the time of interpretation, this include the relevant prior reports.
Radiologists need to have their "to do" worklists of all current Studies that need to be reported, typically prioritized (some are urgent). The user interface must efficiently support their workflow.
And generally: How could the software be improved for these tasks?
In general, the top threerequirements for your software (not necessarily in that order), are:
(1) PERFORMANCE
(2) PERFORMANCE
(3) PERFORMANCE
...
(4) Everything else...
It does not matter how cool the user interface might be, a Radiologist has a huge amount of Studies to interpret/report every day. The speed/performance of the system is very important, so that the user can go home at a reasonable time to play with her/his children and family, etc.. ;-)
The user does not want a huge number of icons/controls/widgets, they distract and intimidate. Your job is to simplify, simplify, and simplify... And, please don't place controls far away from where the user is looking/focusing at, every time the user has to glance away from the view port of interest they loose their train of thought. The most commonly used "tools" have to be always at their fingertips (e.g. mouse?).
Commonly used tools: fast navigation through a stack, precise/slow navigation, window/level/zoom, report/dictate, next Study, etc..
Users want "hanging protocols" that automatically load the next Study from the worklist complete with all the relevant priors, in the layout the user prefers. All the data needs to be displayed immediately/interactively on request.
Oh, and it has to be seamlessly integrated with the reporting/voice recognition system...
OK, I've over simplified...
Be patient, learn a lot, walk a mile in the user's shoes, make this into your career, become a domain expert, then mentor those that come after you...
Have fun.
Good luck!
