Visual expertise in medicine has been a subject of research since many
decades. Interestingly, it has been investigated from two little related
fields, namely the field that focused mainly on the visual search
aspects whilst ignoring higher-level cognitive processes involved in
medical expertise, and the field that mainly focused on these
higher-level cognitive processes largely ignoring the relevant visual
aspects. Consequently, both research lines have traditionally used
different methodologies. Recently, this gap is being increasingly closed
and this special issue presents methods to investigate visual expertise
in medicine from both research lines, namely those investigating vision
(eye tracking, pupillometry, flash preview moving window paradigm),
verbalisations, brain activity, and performance measures (ROC analysis,
gesture coding, expert performance approach). We discuss the benefits
and drawbacks of each method and suggest directions for future research
that could help to unbox the black box of visual expertise in medicine.