Potential performance costs associated with large-format tiled displays for surgical visualization

Twenty-five participants performed a surgical training task on a large format display created from one projector or by tiling the images from a 4-, or 9-projector array. Utilizing a large-format display consisting of tiled projector images brings the potential benefits of increased display size with the potential threats to performance of inherent visual artifacts. The effect of these artifacts on performance and subjective workload was assessed. Results indicate that while display size did not affect performance on the surgical task, differences in mental workload were observed. Although a global measure of workload indicated that the tiled displays were the least demanding to use, participants reported deploying additional but highly specific cognitive resources when using these same displays. Their resource shifts seemed to involve adjustments to the perceived control gains created by enhanced size and also degraded ability to compare target sizes in the larger display, possibly due to the obscuring effect of tile edges.