Displaying Time-Oriented Clinical Data and Knowledge

Abstract

This chapter introduces the reader to the main topics related to the visualization of temporal clinical information. More specifically, the chapter focuses both on displaying raw temporal clinical data and on displaying more abstract temporal clinical data and temporal clinical knowledge. The reader is first introduced to the main aspects of information visualization in medicine and then to the more specific topics related to the visualization of temporal clinical information. Then, several research methodologies and their respective system prototypes are discussed in detail, to demonstrate the different aspects related to the implementation of advanced visualization systems for medical and clinical information, ranging from the visualization of raw temporal data, and the display of more abstract time-oriented data, to the visual composition of temporal queries, and the visual representation of temporal knowledge. The reader learns how to deal with the design and the evaluation of software systems for the visualization of (possibly) complex temporal clinical information. Finally, the reader is guided through the details of several specific systems, designed and implemented for the purpose of visualization and exploration of different kinds of temporal clinical data and knowledge in di_erent real world clinical settings.