Imaging Informatics: A New Horizon for Radiology in the Era of Artificial Intelligence, Big Data, and Data Science

Abstract

We are witnessing the big wave of Industrial Revolution 4.0, enabled by artificial intelligence (AI) and big data, which has shaken the entire industry and day-to-day life as well as rapidly changed the landscapes of related academic disciplines. After the introduction of genome sequencing and analysis technology, biology and medical sciences have been rapidly transforming into data science. Radiology is facing a challenging period of transformation into a data science. This review article draws attention to imaging informatics as a vehicle to open a new horizon and to drive to the future path for radiology in the AI and big data era. We introduce the basic concepts of imaging informatics and consider the informatics features of picture archiving and communication system and digital imaging and communications in medicine. We discuss the concepts and differences of radiogenomics and radiomics, which are important specialties of imaging informatics. We introduce the basics of AI and its recent applications in radiology as well as requirements for the successful construction of big data for imaging informatics. We conclude by discussing unresolved issues, potential solutions, and directions for future developments.

Keywords

• medical informatics
• radiology information system
• big data
• artificial intelligence
• computational biology
• genomics