CONTEXT-DRIVEN ONTOLOGICAL ANNOTATIONS IN DICOM IMAGES Towards Semantic PACS

The enormous volume of medical images and the complexity of clinical information systems make searching for relevant images a challenging task. We describe techniques for annotating and searching medical images using ontological semantic concepts. In contrast to extant multimedia semantic annotation work, our technique uses the context from mappings between multiple ontologies to constrain the semantic space and quickly identify relevant concepts. We have implemented a system using the FMA and RadLex anatomical ontologies, the ICD disease taxonomy, and have coupled the techniques with the DICOM standard for easy deployment in current PAC environments. Preliminary quantitative and qualitative experiments validate the effectiveness of the techniques.