Ontology-based diagnostic decision support in radiology.

The Radiology Gamuts Ontology (RGO) is a knowledge model of diseases, interventions, and imaging manifestations. RGO incorporates 16,822 terms with their synonyms and abbreviations and 55,393 relationships between terms. Subsumption defines the relationship between more general and more specific terms; causality relates disorders and their imaging manifestations. We explored the application of the RGO to build an interactive decision support system for radiological diagnosis. The Gamuts DDx system was created to apply the RGO's knowledge: it identifies a list of potential diagnoses in response to one or more user-specified imaging observations. The system also identifies a set of observations that allow one to narrow the diagnosis, and dynamically narrows or expands the list of diagnoses as imaging findings are selected or deselected. The functionality has been implemented as a web-based user interface and as a web service. The current work demonstrates the feasibility of exploiting the RGO's causal knowledge to provide interactive decision support for diagnosis of imaging findings. Ongoing efforts include the further development of the system's knowledge base and evaluation of the system in clinical use.