MIAWARE SOFTWARE: 3D Medical Image Analysis with Automated Reporting Engine and Ontology-based Search

Abstract

This article presents MIAWARE, a software for Medical Image Analysis With Automated Reporting Engine, which was designed and developed for doctor/radiologist assistance. It allows to analyze an image stack from computed axial tomography scan of lungs (thorax) and, at the same time, to mark all pathologies on images and report their characteristics. The reporting process is normalized - radiologists cannot describe pathological changes with their own words, but can only use some terms from a specific vocabulary set provided by the software. Consequently, a normalized radiological report is automatically generated. Furthermore, MIAWARE software is accompanied with an intelligent search engine for medical reports, based on the relations between parts of the lungs. A logical structure of the lungs is introduced to the search algorithm through the specially developed ontology. As a result, a deductive report search was obtained, which may be helpful for doctors while diagnosing patients’ cases. Finally, the MIAWARE software can be considered also as a teaching tool for future radiologists and physicians.