A CONCEPT-BASED RETRIEVAL-SYSTEM FOR THORACIC RADIOLOGY

Current digital information systems in radiology are insufficient to a ccommodate the retrieval needs of academicians. Significant efforts ar e required in retrieving clinical cases for teaching and research, We describe a prototype system that supports intelligent case retrieval b ased on a combined specification of patient demographics, radiologic f indings, and pathologic diagnoses. The documents for these cases can b e distributed among multiple heterogeneous data bases. The system feat ures automatic indexing of radiology and pathology reports, a comprehe nsive lexicon for thoracic radiology, an interface to a hospital infor mation system, radiology information system, and picture archiving and communication systems, and a graphical user interface for query formu lation and results visualization. The prototype system was developed w ithin the domain of thoracic radiology involving patients with lung ca ncer. Copyright (C) 1996 by W.B. Saunders Company