OBJECTIVE: To investigate the utilization of text mining technique for evaluating the informational quality of electronic mammographic reports considering adherence to the BI-RADS® lexicon as a quality parameter. MATERIALS AND METHODS: A total of 22,247 mammography reports of the period between January, 2000 and June, 2006 were collected from the radiology information database of Hospital das Clínicas da Faculdade de Medicina de Ribeirão Preto, SP, Brazil. Two experiments were undertaken - experiment 1 to evaluate the accuracy in the adoption of the lexicon terms (text mining method specificity), and experiment 2 to identify all and any attempt to utilize or refer to the lexicon (text mining method sensitivity). RESULTS: Experiment 1: variation between 11% and 61% in reports including lexicon terms in their conclusion, randomly distributed over time since 2001. Experiment 2: variation between 44% and 100% in reports that somehow refer to the lexicon in their conclusion. CONCLUSION: Results indicate a good potential for text mining tool application for assessing the quality of information included in electronic mammography reports.

Keywords: Mammography, BI-RADS, Information theory, Medical information technology

Objective: To analyze the Brazilian technological innovation in the field of radiology and imaging diagnosis, in terms of patent indicators. Materials and Methods: Exploratory analytical study of information retrieved through cross queries in databases of intellectual property offices in Brazil (State Industrial Property Office [Instituto Nacional da Propriedade Industrial – INPI]), United States (United States Patent and Trademark Office – USPTO) and Europe (European Patent Office – EPO). Results: There were 277,057 patents in the field of radiology and imaging diagnosis. Of this total, 7,800 were registered at INPI (3%), 65,428 (24%) registered at the EPO and 203,829 (73%) issued by USPTO. Brazil is a signatory to 1,732 patents published by the INPI, 80 by the EPO and 26 by the USPTO. Overall, 219,993 (79%) patents were related to electronic devices strongly linked to information technology in health care, ultrasonography, tomography, magnetic resonance imaging procedures as well as to images generation, communication and archiving, and 57,064 patents (21%) dealt with technologies related to radiation protection and dosimetry, nuclear physics, electrotherapy, magnetic therapy and radiotherapy. Conclusion: The results indicate the weakness of the domestic production of patented technological innovation in the field of radiology and imaging diagnosis.

Keywords: Medical education; Science and technology; Technological innovation; Intellectual property; Research.

OBJECTIVE: To construct a Portuguese language index of information on the practice of diagnostic radiology in order to improve the standardization of the medical language and terminology. MATERIALS AND METHODS: A total of 61,461 definitive reports were collected from the database of the Radiology Information System at Hospital das Clínicas - Faculdade de Medicina de Ribeirão Preto (RIS/HCFMRP) as follows: 30,000 chest x-ray reports; 27,000 mammography reports; and 4,461 thyroid ultrasonography reports. The text mining technique was applied for the selection of terms, and the ANSI/NISO Z39.19-2005 standard was utilized to construct the index based on a thesaurus structure. The system was created in ^*html. RESULTS: The text mining resulted in a set of 358,236 (n = 100%) words. Out of this total, 76,347 (n = 21%) terms were selected to form the index. Such terms refer to anatomical pathology description, imaging techniques, equipment, type of study and some other composite terms. The index system was developed with 78,538 *html web pages. CONCLUSION: The utilization of text mining on a radiological reports database has allowed the construction of a lexical system in Portuguese language consistent with the clinical practice in Radiology.

Keywords: Radiology reports; RadLex; Medical education; Information technology; Health informatics.