When you add an anatomic entity or imaging observation component to your template, you may add one or more characteristics to it. When you import a template into an imaging application, each template component becomes a heading and the template component's characteristics describe the component. For example, the component might be "Lesion" while some of its characteristics might be "Enhancement Quality", "Proportion Enhancing", "Proportion nCET", and "Proportion Necrosis".

Anatomic entity characteristics and imaging observation characteristics can be quantifiable or non-quantifiable. A quantifiable value can be scale, quantile (such as quartile, percentile, or n-tile), numerical like a decimal number in a UCUM (Unified Code for Units of Measurement) unit, and interval. Examples of non-quantifiable are present, absent, and not applicable.

  1. Add a template component of the Anatomic Entity or Imaging Observation AIM class.
  2. Right-click the component and select Create Anatomic Entity Characteristic (anatomic entity characteristic button) or Create Imaging Observation Characteristic (imaging observation characteristic).
  3. Specify information describing the characteristic, as follows.

    Field

    Description

    Label

    Double-click this field to add a label. A label becomes a heading in the image annotation form that users complete once the template is imported into an imaging application. For example, "Lesion".

    Explanatory Text

    Description of the component; for example, "Select the type of lesion".

    Cardinality

    The minimum and maximum number of times the users may select this term when they annotate an image. Click Unlimited if users are not limited in how many times they may select this term.

    Should Display

    Select this box to display this component in the template. In certain situations, information in a component is known and will not be changed.

    Authors

    Describes the AIM Template Builder user who created this component.

    Group Label

    Describes any text that you want to associate with one or more template components and thereby group them together for display purposes.

  4. Click Save.
  5. Add an allowed term to the characteristic.
  6. Create a characteristic quantification.