Open-source solution helps terminology management

Researchers at Stanford University have created Protege, an open-source radiology lexicon that allows easier management of terminologies and ontologies. A common complaint has been that standard lexicon programs such as RadLex are complex and difficult to manage.

Protege will help computer application developers, terminology developers, and the radiology community in general to browse, visualize, and edit large taxonomies (J Digit Imaging 2007 Aug. 9, Epub ahead of print), according to Dr. Daniel L. Rubin, scientific director of the National Center of Biomedical Ontology at Stanford University.

"RadLex was initially developed using word processors and spreadsheets, but it soon became evident that these tools were not suitable for distributing RadLex on the web or for making it accessible to applications," Rubin said.