Structured Reports in Radiology
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Reports can help facilitate the prevention of serious or disabling diseases; an interview with Dr. Luis Martí-Bonmatí of the Royal Academy of Medicine.
Haga clic aquí para leer esta entrevista en español.
Dr. Luis Martí-Bonmatí has held chair number 13 of the Royal Academy of Medicine since last February. In his inaugural speech as a scholar at this prestigious institution, Dr. Martí-Bonmatí made references to quantitative radiology and imaging biomarkers.
In the second part of his interview with Everything Rad, he explains how biomarkers and structured reports will change the way radiologists work in the future.
ER: Will they change radiologists’ way of working?
Dr. Martí-Bonmatí: Radiologists will work more often in enabling environments where the software viewers have structured templates, and where reports are provided with the analysis of all structures and diagnostic criteria that must be analyzed in a patient. They will also have patient data as biomarker results that they will incorporate into the report via messaging DICOM-SR from central servers image processing.
ER: Can you give an example of this change?
Dr. Martí-Bonmatí: An example is the study of steatohepatitis. In addition to analyzing images to detect the presence of associated lesions and the presence of morphological alterations, radiologists will have the result of the fat fraction and liver iron deposition (Mean values, range, percentiles) that were obtained with appropriate MultiEco MR sequences with chemical shift (MECSE).
Also, they will have available values including cellularity and perfusion computational sequence analysis diffusion multivalue b (IVIM) to predict the degree of fibrosis and parenchymal inflammation. All these values will be available in the patient’s history and radiological databases for study and statistical exploitation when deemed necessary.
ER: What changes will involve the application of structured and multimedia radiology reports? Who will benefit?
Dr. Martí-Bonmatí: Structured report is the best way to ensure a complete radiological study. The acquisition of adjusted standardized protocols for the clinical rationale for the study, and information generated through structured reports, and the incorporation of imaging biomarkers together represent our efforts for the benefit of patients.
With this approach (of having the necessary images and relevant information), and through proper communication (including distribution graphs, histograms and references), radiologists will facilitate medicine focused on the individual in order to help prevent serious or disabling diseases, predict courses evolution, customize specific treatments, and participate in relevant clinical decision making.
Click here to read Part 1 of the interview with Dr. Luis Martí-Bonmatí on the role of biomarkers in precision medicine.
Dr. Luis Martí-Bonmatí has held chair number 13 of the Royal Academy of Medicine since February. #HIT
