Development of a template model to represent the information content of chest radiology reports

The authors describe the application of a methodology for developing representational models for loosely structured medical domains. The methodology is subdivided in two interrelated tasks: terminology acquisition and template generation. The methodology is applied to the domain of chest radiology, producing a domain-specific lexicon and a series of templates to represent all the relevant clinical information stated on a chest x-ray report. Details about the successive application of the methodology and the resulting versions of the lexicon and templates are presented. The most relevant aspects of the methodology utilization are discussed and compared with evidence from other authors.