1Department of Radiology, Samsung Medical Center College of Medicine, Sungkyunkwan University, Korea. 2R&D Center, S. C. & J. Inc, Korea.
Published online: September 1, 2001.
ABSTRACT
PURPOSE: To improve efficacy in producing and searching the radiological reports of prostate US in daily practice and clinical research by developing an automated reporting system using structured data entry system. MATERIALS AND METHODS: The report database was established with appropriate fields. A structured data entry form for prostate US was created. The rules for automated transformation from the entered data to a text report have been decided. Two programmers coded the programs according to the rules. RESULTS: We have successfully developed an automated reporting system for prostate US using structured data entry. Patients demographic information, the order information, and the ontents of the main body and conclusion of the radiological report were included as individual fields in the database. The report contents were input by selecting corresponding fields in a structured data entry form, which has transformed into a text report. CONCLUSION: The automated reporting system using structured data entry is an efficient way to establish radiological report database and could be successfully applied to prostate US. If its utility can be extended to other US examinations, it will become a useful tool for both radiological reporting and database management.