Charles E. Kahn MD, MS, Presenter: Shareholder, Hotlight Inc Officer, Hotlight Inc

Yi Hong MS, Abstract Co-Author: Nothing to Disclose

Curtis P. Langlotz MD, PhD, Abstract Co-Author: Advisory Board, Reed Elsevier Advisory Board, General Electric Company Advisory Board, MedNetworks, Inc Shareholder, Montage Healthcare Solutions, Inc

Daniel L. Rubin MD, Abstract Co-Author: Research grant, General Electric Company

RadMap is a semi-automated tool for discovering and mapping RadLex terms in structured reporting concepts.  The mapping process not only allowed RSNA reporting templates to be encoded with RadLex terms, but we also identified opportunities to extend and enrich the RadLex vocabulary to meet the needs of clinical radiology reports.

Structured reporting gives radiologists the opportunity to incorporate controlled vocabularies, such as RadLex®, into their reports to enhance the reports' clinical usefulness, facilitate data extraction, and improve quality.  Linking terms used in reporting templates to controlled vocabularies can promote standardization among reporting systems.  We describe a process to integrate RadLex terminology into the XML-based reporting templates developed by the RSNA Reporting Initiative.

We developed a semi-automated system, called RadMap, to discover RadLex concepts in reporting templates.  We applied RadMap to 70 reporting templates released in 2009 by the RSNA. These documents, encoded in RELAX-NG, a subset of the Extensible Markup Language (XML), specified the structure of radiology reports.  RadMap parsed the documents and extracted the names of reporting concepts.  RadMap mapped those concept names to terms in the RadLex ontology through a web-service interface to the National Center for Biomedical Ontology (NCBO) BioPortal site.  A semi-automated interface allowed users to select the most appropriate RadLex term.  As its output, RadMap produced RELAX-NG documents that integrated the RadLex concept identifiers into the reporting templates. 

Semi-automated mapping to RadLex concepts allowed successful processing of most reporting terms.  Some terms, such as "Right upper lobe," initially could not be mapped to Radlex;  the corresponding RadLex term, "Upper lobe of right lung," did not match.  Most of the cases where reporting terms were not mapped successfully to RadLex were addressed by adding synonyms to existing terms or by proposing new RadLex terms. Post-coordianted terns generally required manual editing to correctly assign the series of RadLex terms. 

Kahn, C, Hong, Y, Langlotz, C, Rubin, D, Encoding Radiology Report Templates with RadLex® Terms.  Radiological Society of North America 2010 Scientific Assembly and Annual Meeting, November 28 - December 3, 2010 ,Chicago IL. http://archive.rsna.org/2010/9003390.html