Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is a key examination in medical decision making. Despite MRI technics are slightly similar, each industrial has developed his own vocabulary to describe the MRI experience. Ontologies have been developed to help in such situations. We have decided to create IT solutions using ontology for three daily radiological situations: exams annotation, MRI artifacts recognition and correction and exam appropriateness. The domain knowledge is extracted from literature and everyday practice. DICOM, as key element for data exchange in radiology, has been used to create the ontology. Concerning MRI artifacts, a part of the knowledge comes from a collaborative work with the university of Texas A&M Temple. Concerning exam appropriateness, we have chosen a representative clinical situation: interest of knee MRI in case of knee trauma. The statistical data are coming from a clinical study done in the CHU of Rennes. Our systems allow users to take benefits of ontology without facing it. They give a DICOM header analysis, proposed an image annotation, compare image to correct MRI artifacts and help physicians to judge MRI appropriateness in case of knee trauma. We have demonstrated that ontologies could be used to improve daily practice in radiology and that ontologies could be associated to image and statistical data. Future of this work could be a system transformation into a web service.
