Content-Based Image Retrieval Systems in Medical Applications - Clinical Benefits and Future Directions

摘要

This article gives an overview of the currently available literature on content-based image retrieval in the medical domain. It evaluates after a few years of developments the need for image retrieval and presents concrete scenarios for promising future research directions. This need is mainly due to the large amount of visual data produced and the unused information that these data contain, which could be used for diagnostics, teaching and research. The necessity for additional, alternative access methods to the currently-used, text-based methods in medical information retrieval is detailed. A short overview of nonmedical image retrieval is given as well. The lack of evaluations of the retrieval quality of systems becomes apparent along with the unavailability of large image databases free of charge with defined query topics and gold standards. However, some databases are available, from the NIH (National Institutes of Health), for example. Ideas for creating such image databases and evaluation methods are proposed.