Essential Elements of Natural Language Processing: What the Radiologist Should Know.

Area of Science:

• Medical Imaging
• Natural Language Processing
• Artificial Intelligence

Background:

• Natural language is integral to radiologists' daily workflows.
• Advancements in artificial intelligence (AI) and deep learning have significantly impacted natural language processing (NLP).

Purpose of the Study:

• To discuss the historical development of data extraction and natural language encoding in medical imaging.
• To explore the evolution of medical NLP, including key techniques and applications.

Main Methods:

• Review of NLP evolution from linguistic rules to modern AI.
• Exploration of techniques like vectorization, word embedding, and classification.
• Discussion of automated speech recognition in medical contexts.

Main Results:

• Significant advancements in NLP driven by deep learning and AI.
• Incremental improvements in NLP through machine learning and neural networks.

Conclusions:

• NLP has evolved considerably, offering enhanced analytical capabilities for medical imaging data.
• AI and machine learning are pivotal in the ongoing progress of medical NLP.