Context-aware medical image retrieval for improved dementia diagnosis

Abstract

Progress in medical imaging technology together with the increasing demand for confirming a diagnostic decision with objective, repeatable, and reliable measures for improved healthcare have multiplied the number of digital medical images that need to be processed, stored, managed, and searched. Comparison of multiple patients, their pathologies, and progresses by using image search systems may largely contribute to improved diagnosis and education of medical students and residents. Supporting image content information with contextual knowledge will lead to increased reliability, robustness, and accuracy in search results. To this end, the authors present an image search system that permits search by a multitude of image features (content), and demographics, patient's medical history, clinical data, and ontologies (context). Moreover, they validate the system's added value in dementia diagnosis via evaluations on publicly available image databases. © 2017 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.