UMLS-based automatic image indexing.

To date, most accurate image retrieval techniques rely on textual descriptions of images. Our goal is to automatically generate indexing terms for an image extracted from a biomedical article by identifying Unified Medical Language System (UMLS) concepts in image caption and its discussion in the text. In a pilot evaluation of the suggested image indexing method by five physicians, a third of the automatically identified index terms were found suitable for indexing.