Comparison of Japanese notation and meanings among three terminologies in radiological technology domain

The purpose of this study is to investigate the differences in the notation of technical terms and their meanings among three terminologies in Japanese radiology-related societies. The three terminologies compared in this study were 'radiological technology terminology' and its supplement published by the Japan Society of Radiological Technology, 'medical physics terminology' published by the Japan Society of Medical Physics, and 'electric radiation terminology' published by the Japan Radiological Society. Terms were entered into spreadsheets and classified into the following three categories: Japanese notation, English notation, and meanings. In the English notation, terms were matched to character strings in the three terminologies and were extracted and compared. The Japanese notations were compared among three terminologies, and the difference between the meanings of the two terminologies radiological technology terminology and electric radiation terminology were compared. There were a total of 14,982 terms in the three terminologies. In English character strings, 2,735 terms were matched to more than two terminologies, with 801 of these terms matched to all the three terminologies. Of those terms in English character strings matched to three terminologies, 752 matched to Japanese character strings. Of the terms in English character strings matched to two terminologies, 1,240 matched to Japanese character strings. With regard to the meanings category, eight terms had mismatched meanings between the two terminologies. For these terms, there were common concepts between two different meaning terms, and it was considered that the derived concepts were described based on domain. (author)