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You use the AIM Template Manager to design templates based on a lexicon of standard and user-definable terms. You can then collect multiple templates into template groups. You complete the process by downloading a template group as an XML file to your local computer.

Why Use the AIM Model?

Imaging reports contain both graphical drawings and medical knowledge in the form of annotations. These annotations are stored as unstructured text and separated from graphical drawings, which are typically in a proprietary format on an imaging system. Extracting this valuable medical information and combining them with drawings on another system is time-consuming and cumbersome to filter and search.

AIM begins to solve this problem by capturing the descriptive information of an image with user-generated graphical symbols placed on the image into a single common information source. AIM captures medical findings using standard vocabularies such as RadLex, SNOMED CT, DICOM, and user-defined terminology. Image information captured in the AIM model includes the anatomic entity and its characteristics, imaging observation and its characteristics, and inference. However, existing vocabularies used to describe medical images contain thousands of terms that make it difficult for users to find and then include them in their AIM annotations.

What is in an AIM Template?

An AIM template consists of a set of related questions for a study. It captures the name, version, description, UID, controlled term applied to the template, authors, and creation date of a template. It also has one or more components. A component represents a question in a study. It may have one or more answers associated with the component. It can either be Anatomic Entity, Imaging Observation, Inference and Calculation.

A component can be one of the following types.

• Anatomic Entity
  • Anatomic Entity Characteristic
• Imaging Observation
  • Imaging Observation Characteristic
• Inference
• Calculation

Anatomic entity may have one or more anatomic entity characteristics. An anatomic entity characteristic contains every attribute that a component has. It has “annotator confidence” that allows a user to enter a level of user’s confidence answering the question in terms of a percentage. A characteristic may have a quantification value.

• Anatomic Entity Characteristic
  • Quantification
  • Interval
  • Scale
  • Quantile
  • Non-quantifiable
  • Numerical

Imaging observation may have one or more imaging observation characteristics. An imaging observation characteristic contains every attribute that a component has. It has “annotator confidence” that allows a user to enter a level of user’s confidence answering the question in terms of a percentage. A characteristic may have a of the below quantifications and non-quantifiable.

• Imaging Observation Characteristic
• Quantification
  • Interval
  • Scale
  • Quantile
  • Non-quantifiable
  • Numerical

Working with Template Groups

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