Biomedical Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Fig. 13.1
Different knowledge acquisition sources in the medical domain
How to get access to such knowledge in the digital patient perspective? Two dom-
inant modalities for information access emerge, which apply also to the traditional
sources: the
visual
(i.e. based on images and 3D models) and the
lexical
(i.e. based
on words, in a natural or formal language) modalities. In conventional cases, the
two modalities are usually integrated, at least to some degree: for instance, body
parts are usually labeled with their scientific names in an anatomy poster. Scientific
illustrations of medical knowledge have been subject of research also in the com-
puter graphics community as a way to enhance the communication of knowledge to
students and professionals in the field [
2
].
Hence, the research questions are: to what extent can we use these two natural
channels of communication in the modern digital medicine? How to combine them
in such a way that we benefit from the strengths of both and improve the ability of
conveying knowledge and supporting new data correlation?
At first we have to discuss on the type of information involved and how it is
represented and accessed: is it about anatomy? Can it be localized within some
anatomical district? Is it decoupled from anatomy and does it concern diagnosis,
symptoms analysis, or forensic categorization of pathologies? In the following sec-
tions we will provide examples of different research efforts taking into account differ-
ent information types. Most of the efforts are tailored just for one or few applications,
