Technical finding

A finding stated in modality-specific imaging language. “‘Technical findings’ describe what the radiologist observes on the images, signal characteristics, density, enhancement patterns, echogenicity, without necessarily committing to an underlying pathological process.”¹

The reference catalogs them by modality: CT attenuation terms such as hypodense lesion and ground-glass opacity; MR signal terms such as diffusion restriction and marrow signal abnormality; enhancement and opacification patterns such as washout and filling defect; ultrasound echogenicity terms such as anechoic structure and posterior acoustic shadowing; and nuclear medicine terms such as FDG-avid lesion and photopenic area.¹

The distinction that matters for coding is observation versus interpretation. “The same imaging appearance can be described at observation level (‘T2 hyperintense marrow signal’) or interpretation level (‘marrow edema’). Reports often mix both. The ontology needs entries at the observation level to capture what’s actually seen.” The guidance is specific: “marrow signal abnormality should be searched as exactly that, it is the observation. Do NOT reinterpret as ‘bone marrow edema’ or ‘marrow infiltration’, which are specific diagnoses that may or may not be the cause.”¹

Synonyms and near-synonyms

• Descriptive observation is the authoring guidance’s term for the same half of the split, opposite a diagnosis.²
• Imaging observation in IHE IDR is close but broader.
• Descriptor is not the same: “hypodense” alone is a characteristic of a lesion, while “hypodense liver lesion” is a technical finding.
• finding_type in a finding taxonomy row encodes the same observation-versus-diagnosis split.³

Identifier form

None distinct. A technical finding modelled as a finding model carries an ordinary OIFM identifier.

Where it is used

Technical imaging findings, Finding and location coding, and Why finding models.

Conflicts

The reference is explicitly a draft, and it ends with an unresolved question that matters for the vocabulary: whether “technical-observation entries and clinical-interpretation entries should be separate or merged in the ontology.” It also records that the corpus has not yet been audited for coverage of these categories.¹

Footnotes

1. Technical Imaging Findings reference ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴

2. “Finding Models: Overview” ↩

3. MGB exam-oriented sub-taxonomies README ↩