Ultrasound reports standardisation using rhetorical structure theory and domain ontology

• Published in: Journal of biomedical informatics 2019-01, Vol.100, p.100003-100003, Article 100003
• Main Authors: Zulkarnain, Nur Zareen, Meziane, Farid
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Discourse markers; Discourse parsing; Ontology; Rhetorical relation; Rhetorical structure theory; Structured reporting; Ultrasound reporting
• ISSN: 1532-0464; 1532-0480
• DOI: 10.1016/j.yjbinx.2019.100003

[Display omitted] •Using RST and ontology to transform free-form ultrasound reports to structured form.•Allows discourse parsing of reports that are syntactically incorrect.•Discourse parsing using RST and ontology on ultrasound reports is effective. Ultrasound reporting plays an important role in diagnosis as images produced during an ultrasound examination do not give the whole view of the medical conditions. However, in practice there are many issues that are inherent to ultrasound reporting and the most important was identified to be the lack of standardisation when producing these reports. There is a resistance to change from some radiologists preferring the free writing style, making any attempt to computerise the processing of these reports difficult. This paper explores the possibility of using Rhetorical Structure Theory (RST) together with a domain ontology to transform free-form ultrasound reports into a structured form. It discusses a new approach in segmenting and identifying rhetorical relations that are more applicable to ultrasound reports from classical RST relations. The approach was evaluated on a sample ultrasound reports where the system’s parsing was compared to the manual parsing performed by experts. The results show that discourse parsing using RST in ultrasound reports can be performed effectively using the support of a domain ontology. The results also demonstrate that the transformation of free-form ultrasound reports into a structured form can be performed with the support of RST relations identified and the domain ontology.