Creation of an Ontology for the Assessment of Fundamentals of Medical Ultrasound

The role of ultrasound evaluation in medicine has become very important–be it for emergency patient evaluation or bedside ultrasound. Ultrasound imaging has become the new “stethoscope”: less invasive than X-ray imaging and more affordable than magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). Further benefits are that it is fast, accurate, and allows for dynamic images (i.e., movement is not only possible but also sometimes required). In order to provide valid and reliable assessment of ultrasound knowledge and skills (KSAs), the definition of these KSAs needs to be integrated into the assessment technology in form of ontologies. An ontology is a (graphical) representation of a knowledge domain that describes the knowledge and skill entities and their relations. We describe the creation and validation of an ontology for the assessment of fundamentals of medical ultrasound. Results show that the ontology was helpful to evaluate a learning domain in terms of its correctness and completeness of resources and that a clear and concise definition of its entities is of great importance.