Generating XML schemas for DICOM structured reporting templates

Abstract

In this paper, the authors describe a methodology to transform programmatically structured reporting (SR) templates defined by the Digital Imaging and Communications for Medicine (DICOM) standard into an XML schema representation. Such schemas can be used in the creation and validation of XML-encoded SR documents that use templates. Templates are a means to put additional constraints on an SR document to promote common formats for specific reporting applications or domains. As the use of templates becomes more widespread in the production of SR documents, it is important to ensure validity of such documents. The work described in this paper is an extension of the authors' previous work on XML schema representation for DICOM SR. Therefore, this paper inherits and partially modifies the structure defined in the earlier work.