Multimedia radiological reports: creation and playback.

Multimedia radiological reports tie together radiographic images and operations on these images with textual, vocal, or graphic annotation. The result is an animated presentation of the radiological examination report. A temporal representation for a multimedia radiological report that describes the temporal behavior of the animated report is introduced. The temporal behavior specifies the synchronization requirements for the coordinated presentation of the multimedia report components. The temporal behavior is encoded in a temporal semantic network that is a network of temporally ordered nodes, where each node represents some primitive behavior. Automatic creation of the multimedia radiological report consists of the capture, interpretation, and storage of the temporal semantics of the radiologist's reporting session in terms of a set of primitive behaviors. Automatic playback of the multimedia radiological report is the orderly traversal of the temporal semantic network, invoking the behavior associated with each of the nodes in the temporal order described by the interconnecting arcs.