Implementing an image information sharing system based on IHE XDS-I profile and ontology

The Integrating the Healthcare Enterprise (IHE) provided a series profiles for decreasing costs and integrating different healthcare enterprises. In IHE Cross-Enterprise Document Sharing for Image (XDS-I), it provides a web service and Web Access to Digital Imaging and Communication in Medicine Persistent Objects (WADO) service, to access DICOM objects. This paper analyzes the operational specifications of the WADO service and extends the access capability of WADO service to get other related documents and/or reports based on IHE XDS-I profile. And then we re-design an ontology following the Unified Medical Language System (UMLS) for use in the relationship between Structure Reports (SR). By analyzing the SR to retrieve key words and using an ontology to search, we can retrieve the other related reports and/or images. This research wants to find the related medical image documents when getting a SR or DICOM image from a patient or other Enterprises. It can reduce the time for searching and improve the diagnostic accuracy, when radiologist write or read reports and images.