Finding taxonomy
One of the six MGB exam-oriented sub-taxonomies: per-modality hierarchies of radiology finding names, contributed by Mass General Brigham and exported to the findingmodels repository on 2026-08-15 as comma-separated files.1 They replaced the repository’s earlier lists/ content wholesale.
Each file is one hierarchy with the columns name, category, parent, synonyms, finding_type, finding_cluster, and oifm_id. Rows are keyed by name, unique within a file, so there is no separate identifier column. The parent column holds the parent row’s name; blank means top level. “Parents are generic, children add specificity,” the worked example being lung_abnormality then airspace_opacity then air_bronchogram. Two columns are deliberately outside the hierarchy: category is “an independent anatomic grouping, not part of the hierarchy,” and finding_type “separates an observation from a diagnosis.”1
| File | Rows | OIFM IDs filled |
|---|---|---|
xr_chest_findings.csv | 403 | 305 |
xr_msk_findings.csv | 259 | 40 |
ct_head_findings.csv | 520 | 449 |
ct_chest_abdomen_pelvis_findings.csv | 2064 | 207 |
mg_breast_findings.csv | 198 | 5 |
mri_spine_findings.csv | 345 | 22 |
| Total | 3789 | 1028 |
No identifiers were minted during the export. Filled rows were matched by exact name against ids.json, and the blank rows are stated to be “the ones needing triage.”1
Synonyms and near-synonyms
- Finding list is the older name for the files these replaced.
- Finding taxonomy is not a finding model. A taxonomy row is a name and a place in a hierarchy; a finding model is a full definition with attributes.
- The taxonomies are named after their author in the source repository. This knowledgebase calls them the MGB exam-oriented sub-taxonomies.
Identifier form
None. Rows are keyed by name and carry an OIFM identifier only where one already existed.
Where it is used
Finding taxonomies and Finding model content direction.
Conflicts
An identifier “can appear on two rows where those earlier writebacks mapped two findings onto one model,” so the mapping from taxonomy row to finding model is not one to one.1 The finding_type observation-versus-diagnosis split also overlaps the entity_type field the metadata rewrite introduces, which has seven values rather than two.