In a plurality of pieces of single report structured data that is stored
in a structured database in a diagnosis information database, character
information constructing a radiological report describing detailed
information of image data is added as metadata for search to the image
data. For example, only by designating image data to be read as image
(retrieval reference image) data as a reference of retrieval by a reading
physician as the user during radiological operation, the character
information already added to the retrieval reference image data is set as
a keyword. By a keyword search using the metadata, data of a similar
image and a related report of the retrieval reference image data are
detected from the structured DB.