Reducing affective responses to surgical images through color manipulation and stylization

We present the first empirical study on using color manipulation and stylization to make surgery images more palatable. While aversion to such images 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, and tested them both on surgeons and lay people. While many artistic methods were found unusable by surgeons, edge-preserving image smoothing gave good results both in terms of preserving information (as judged by surgeons) and reducing repulsiveness (as judged by lay people). Color manipulation turned out to be not as effective.