Bio-medical Ontologies Maintenance and Change Management

Multimedia Medical Databases 75
Being given a collection C of N images, it is required to find all images αT ∈ C
that have at least R symbols existing in the same spatial arrangement as the R
symbols of the query image.
In the case of the absolute spatial images query it have to be solved the
following problem [83, 86]:
Being given a collection C of N images and a spatial distance function vf , it is
required to find the most appropriate k images αT ∈ C that have at least R regions
R R R
such that uf (αQ ,αT )≤ σf ,where αQ is the query image with R regions, and σf is a
limit for the spatial distance.
The most powerful images retrieval system must allows queries where are
specified both the visual features and spatial properties for the desired images.
Such query offers to the user the possibility to control the selection of regions and
attributes which are the most important in the similarity computation.
1.3 The Need for Content-Based Visual Query in Multimedia Medical
Databases
The directions where content-based retrieval is needed in medical multimedia
databases were fully specified. They are [67, 69]:
• Diagnostic aid – from the conversation with the doctors, the following situation
appears frequently: the doctor visualizes a medical image, he/she cannot establish
the diagnosis exactly, he is aware of the fact that he has seen something
similar before but doesn’t have the means to search for it in the database; the
problem can be solved establishing that image as query image and the contentbased
image query will provide the similar images from the database; it is very
likely that among the retrieved images should be the searched image together
with its diagnosis, observations, treatment; so the content-based image query
can be directly used in the diagnosis process;
• Medical teaching – there is a series of applications for content-based visual
query including other ways for access (text-based, hierarchical methods). Students
can see the images in the database and the attached information in a simple
and direct manner: they choose the query image and they see the similar
images; this method stimulates learning by comparing similar cases and their
particularities or comparing similar cases with different diagnosis;
• Medical research – using content-based visual query in this area brings up similar
advantages for medical teaching. It can be used, for example, for finding
certain types of images to be included in a study, for finding misclassified images,
etc.;
• PACS and electronic records for patients – the integration of the content-based
visual retrieval techniques and the simple text-based retrieval in PACS and the
electronic patients’ record might bring important benefits in clinical applications.
The information that is stored in the image can be used together with the
alphanumerical information.