Potential use of extensible markup language for radiology reporting: a tutorial

One of the main goals of radiology is to communicate imaging information to aid in patient management. Information standards can facilitate communication and help realize this goal. Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a new information transmission standard that was developed to meet the growing need for robust, large-scale World Wide Web applications. XML notation provides a compact document representation scheme that allows radiology reports to be transmitted over the Web as universally understandable, self-defining documents. XML documents can include a report-specific document type definition (DTD) that defines the allowable data fields and values. XML may also be used to generate data entry forms for radiology reporting and help physicians improve the efficiency of the reporting process. XML documents can be used to store reporting results directly, thus allowing pertinent data to be shared on the Web. An XML-based approach can allow users to link information to entities outside the information systems of a given institution. XML-based methods and applications have the potential to promote development of robust radiology reporting systems and integration with broader, enterprise-wide information systems.