Prologue: 2022
The anatomic-location work predates the project’s own name. The TypeScript wrapper repository was created on 2022-02-02, the Python wrapper on 2022-07-19, and the curated dataset and its site on 2022-12-14.1 The dataset’s own changelog records version 1.0.0-rc.1 in December 2022, adding a version field and SNOMED links. The curated set reached 2,890 records and its last substantive site commit, a hierarchy tree view, landed on 2023-01-10. See the anatomic location lineage.
2023: naming, schema, and the first demonstrations
| Date | Event |
|---|---|
| 2023-02-20 | The openimagingdata.org repository is created under the name Open Radiology Data Model, pointing at the domain openraddata.org.2 |
| 2023-02-21 to 2023-05-01 | The CDE Set and CDE Element JSON schema is drafted in that repository, followed by an Observation schema, sample Observations, and a written gap analysis between the schema and the RadElement API. |
| 2023-02-27 | CDEStaging is created as a staging area for rapidly drafted common data element definitions.1 |
| 2023-04-27 | OpenImagingDataModel.ts is created, the first reference implementation. |
| 2023-05-31 | CDETemplateDemo is created, rendering a CDE-labeled Observation into report prose. See CDE template rendering. |
| by 2023-06-21 | The public site’s About page carries the name Open Imaging Data Model. The rename from Open Radiology Data Model therefore happened between February and June 2023; the old repository’s README was never updated and still carries the old name.2 |
| 2023-06-24 | First site post, “Findings, CDEs, and Observations”, which sets out the founding claim that a radiology finding is a FHIR Observation labeled with CDE codes.3 |
| 2023-06-26 | ”SIIM Update” reports an in-person meeting and a hackathon demonstration of a web service that turns a CDE-tagged FHIR Observation into customizable report prose. |
| 2023-06-27 | The site repository’s CNAME is deleted in its last commit; the public site moves to a hosted blog at openimagingdata.org. |
| 2023-07-16 | ”OIDM-Based Next-gen Reporting Assistance Framework” proposes a plugin container in which assistance scripts run against standardized report context. |
| 2023-08-14 | ”How to Get Involved” lists the participation channels: site registration, meetings, a Slack channel, working groups, and demo projects. |
| 2023-09-07 | UseCases is created to collect application ideas. See the use case catalog. |
| 2023-10-22 | Last commit on the TypeScript reference implementation’s default branch. |
| 2023-12-30 | SARTemplatesToCDEs is created to convert Society of Abdominal Radiology templates into CDE sets. |
2024: SIIM, ontology linking, and the manuscript
| Date | Event |
|---|---|
| 2024-01-12 | ”2024 New Year Update” reports an assisted-reporting framework demonstrated at RSNA by an industry collaborator, expansion of chest CT CDE content with the ACR and RSNA CDE committee, and plans for an open toolkit, anatomic location indexing through ACR Commons, and outcome tracking.3 |
| 2024-01-25 | ”Data Model: Structure and Function” describes OIDM as a superstructure on FHIR, comparable to how a browser’s document object model relates to HTML, and names two utility libraries: anatomic locations, and an exam type library based on the LOINC and RSNA Playbook linked to anatomic locations. |
| 2024-01-29 | Meeting summary for the 2024-01-26 data model and library meeting: links to IHE and HL7, PACS and workflow applications, and whether the model is a protocol or a runtime. |
| 2024-02-26 | Last commit to UseCases. |
| 2024-03-08 | OpenImagingDataModel.py is created; its observation.py becomes the canonical FHIR Observation shape in the lineage. |
| 2024-03-11 | Last commit to SARTemplatesToCDEs, leaving a detailed itemized redesign of one CDE set as its most substantial artifact. |
| 2024-03-12 to 2024-03-13 | FHIRSamples is created and completed: a lung cancer screening DiagnosticReport with three chained CDE-coded Observations. |
| 2024-05-15 | ”SIIM Hackathon Project” states the plan to link CDE sets automatically to SNOMED CT, RadLex, and Anatomic Locations using semantic search and foundation model embeddings. |
| 2024-06-05 | ”SIIM In-Person Meeting” sets an agenda covering RadElement and MARVAL review procedures, chest CT CDE content feeding FHIR Observations, the TypeScript and Python libraries, and anatomic locations. |
| 2024-06-17 | ”Counting Down to SIIM”. |
| 2024-06-18 | ”AI-Powered Chest CT Reporting” reports that a large language model generated more than 200 CDE definitions from anonymized chest CT reports, reviewed by radiologists and published to GitHub. |
| 2024-06-20 | ”Attaching Ontology Links to Common Data Elements” describes automating what had been manual code selection across SNOMED CT, RadLex, and Anatomic Locations. |
| 2024-07-01 | ”Benchmarking a Vision” announces a manuscript in the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association, “Standardizing imaging findings representation: harnessing Common Data Elements semantics and Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources structures”, with a pulmonary nodule case study, arguing that CDE-labeled Observations should be the universal representation for radiology report content.4 |
| 2024-07-02 | ”SIIM 2024 Update: Hackathon Edition” reports a working tool that associates ontology concepts with CDE set definitions across Anatomic Locations, RadLex, and SNOMED CT using six ranked search methods, and that it won the Audience Choice award.5 |
| 2024-10-31 | FindingModelForge is created, the authoring application later deployed at fmf.oidm.org. |
| 2024-12-31 | ReportFindingRefiner is created, the most complete of the report-to-structure extraction pipelines. See extraction approaches. |
2025: finding models become the content spine
| Date | Event |
|---|---|
| 2025-02-21 | common_data_elements is created to hold a periodic snapshot of RadElement definitions and the CDE schema versions.1 |
| 2025-03-02 | ontology_tools is created and never gets past a README naming three target ontologies. |
| 2025-03-10 | ”Leveraging Common Data Elements (CDEs) to Enhance Radiology Reporting”, a guest post from a reporting vendor, is the most recent post on the site.3 |
| 2025-03-26 | findingmodels is created and the first finding model definitions are committed the same day. |
| 2025-03-27 | get_ontology_findings is created to match RadLex entries to imaging findings. |
| 2025-04-14 | findingmodel is created as the library for the Open Imaging Finding Model (OIFM) format. |
| 2025-05-23 | Last commit to ReportFindingRefiner. |
| 2025-06-05 | template_extraction is created; it accumulates a corpus of 281 RadReport templates. |
| 2025-06-19 | finding-models-site is created as a static catalog reader over the findingmodels corpus. |
| 2025-08-04 | imaging-problem-list is created. |
| 2025-08-22 to 2025-08-23 | The first Exam Finding List sample data is committed. |
| 2025-09-04 | The first Imaging Problem List is assembled from a separate report and Exam Finding List. |
| 2025-10-18 | IPL-MVP-ExtractionAndLabeling is created; by 2025-10-31 it has a four-stage extraction and mapping pipeline and three unmerged experiment branches. |
| 2025-11-13 | The first full worked example lands in imaging-problem-list along with a lightweight viewer. |
| 2025-11-18 | Last commit on the imaging-problem-list stable branch; dev continues from here. |
| 2025-11-25 | Last commit to CDEStaging. |
2026: monorepo, taxonomies, RadLex, and the next-generation vocabulary
| Date | Event |
|---|---|
| 2026-01 | The status deck Open Imaging Data Model 2026 Status Update: Realizing Object-Oriented Imaging Results sets out three strategic pillars, the Observation to Imaging Persona hierarchy, and a call for an ACR-hosted structured imaging results working group.6 See the extract. |
| 2026-01-02 | Last commit on the FindingModelForge dev branch, which remains unmerged.1 |
| 2026-01-30 | findingmodel pull request 36 merges, splitting the library into five packages: findingmodel, findingmodel-ai, anatomic-locations, oidm-common, and oidm-maintenance.7 |
| 2026-03-04 | findingmodel main reaches its released state. |
| 2026-04-11 to 2026-06-29 | The canonical structured-metadata rewrite proceeds on dev and then feature/metadata-cleanup, adding eight optional metadata fields and a seven-agent assignment architecture. Neither branch has merged. |
| 2026-04-28 | findingmodels main reaches its current tip with 2,382 definitions. |
| 2026-06-02 to 2026-06-09 | RSNA creates the RadLex repository and adds the RadLex 4.3 OWL file. |
| 2026-06-10 | Anatomic-location coding of Exam Finding Lists and regrouping of the Imaging Problem List by finding code plus location complete on the imaging-problem-list dev branch. |
| 2026-07-22 | Current tip of imaging-problem-list dev, 258 commits ahead of the stable branch, now a full extraction, coding, persistence, and review platform. See the report extraction platform. |
| 2026-08-10 | RSNA/RadLex issue 3, “Add Anatomic Locations”, is opened with the exit criterion of full coverage of the Anatomic Locations terminology in RadLex.8 |
| 2026-08-15 | The taxonomy-export-2026-08-15 branch replaces the legacy lists directory in findingmodels with six MGB exam-oriented sub-taxonomies, 3,789 rows, of which 1,028 already match an existing finding model identifier by exact name.9 |
| 2026-08-16 to 2026-08-21 | med-ontology-lookup is created and published, providing terminology lookup across RadLex, SNOMED CT, FMA, LOINC, and UMLS. |
| 2026-08-21 | The next-gen-2026 branch opens in the RSNA ACR-RSNA-CDEs repository with next-generation schema research notes in Open Knowledge Format. |
| 2026-09-02 to 2026-09-15 | Decisions S30 through S51 are recorded on that branch, covering anatomy families, scope corrections, and the split between prototype and integration work. |
| 2026-09-20 | Latest activity in med-ontology-lookup; typed provider failures merge and offline continuous integration remains uncommitted. |
| 2026-09-20 to 2026-09-21 | This knowledgebase is planned and begun. See the build plan. |
Footnotes
-
Repository creation and push dates from the GitHub API, read 2026-09-21 ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4
-
openimagingdata.org repository README, still titled “Open Radiology Data Model” ↩ ↩2
-
openimagingdata.org RSS feed, 15 posts, read 2026-09-21 ↩ ↩2 ↩3
-
“Benchmarking a Vision”, 2024-07-01, announcing the JAMIA manuscript ↩
-
“SIIM 2024 Update: Hackathon Edition”, 2024-07-02 ↩
-
Open Imaging Data Model 2026 Status Update, January 2026 ↩
-
findingmodel pull request 36, monorepo split into five packages, merged 2026-01-30 ↩
-
RSNA/RadLex issue 3, “Add Anatomic Locations”, opened 2026-08-10 ↩
-
findingmodels lists/README.md describing the MGB exam-oriented sub-taxonomies ↩