According to Wikipedia Yotta is “an SI prefix in the SI (system of units) denoting 10²⁴ or 1 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000.” That is a lot of zeros, but a very catching name for a search engine.

Thursday, the 21st of December, 2006 was the release date of Yottalook, a Radiology specific search engine powered by iVirtuoso’s algorhithm. The most popular feature of this search engine is Yottalook Image Search that has just been upgraded. It now offers “detailed” or “thumbnails only” views, and supports PicLens, so that you can view all the images full screen on a 3D wall!

The thumbnails view is handy when you want to find a suitable image quickly, and you care more about what is on the image, than the procedure behind it. When you navigate over an image in this mode a few sentences will appear about the image such as the journal it came from, and a few words on the technique. Use the detailed view to get the original text from underneath the image as it appears in the article. This view allows you to jump to the article or you may choose to view all images from it.

You can easily social bookmark your search result, and you may choose from 34 bookmarking sites. There has been talks about Image Search RSS support, but it has not happened yet. I think the diagnostic imaging community is eagerly waiting for that to become available.

Yottalook Books is a customized and Yottalook optimized Google Book Search, but it works just fine. My favorite is that Yottalook is very powerful in searching for definitions. Enter “Define: whatever” and let the search engine do the rest. Here it is:

You can search Yottalook amongst other great diagnostic imaging search engines from the SeekRadiology search page!

Further information:

• How to find pertinent information in Imaging?
• More on Yottalook
• Yottalook blog
• SeekRadiology

- Andras

In science, new information comes in neat research papers, and the database for these papers is PubMed. If you are a scientists or a science student, you probably cannot live without PubMed, literally.

But PubMed has come under a lot of criticism lately, and that has given rise to startups such as JournalReview and Biowizard. Now there is a new startup in town by the name of Ologeez! At the moment there is only one Stanford grad student behind it all, but the beta version looks promising.

Ologeez is not just a new interface for PubMed! With this site users can give a “thumbs-up” or a “thumbs down” for each article, which in turn will eventually place the most popular articles on the top of the search results. Users can also upload the abstract of articles not featured on PubMed.

When you sign up, and assume a profile on Ologeez, you get your own library, where you can access all the articles you have uploaded, commented on, rated, tagged, etc., so that you will never have to keep anything on your hard drive anymore. This makes keeping track of information much more easy.

You can start your own WikiGroup on Ologeez. This can be the Wiki of your research group, your class, or company, and you can choose to make this Wiki public or private. Free services of this feature are: calendar with group editing, news board, publications list, protocols, photo albums, group forums, and privacy controls.

While Ologeez was not meant to be a Facebook-type community site for scientists, you can keep track of your colleagues, who have already signed-up. You can leave them private notes, and you can view their ratings and comments about research papers.

Here is a video about uploading an abstract to Ologeez:

You can always check out the website’s tour, and if you like what you see sign-up to become a member today!

Further Reading:

• Ologeez! website
• Another 10 great Web 2.0 tools for Diagnostic Imaging Professionals
• Biowizard
• JournalReview

- Andras

I have already talked about the different search engines that are available if you would like to find information regarding radiology and/or nuclear medicine, but the Radiology Search Engine, which really is a swicki has grabbed my attention lately:

Swickis are advertised as social browsers according to Wikipedia. They are easy to edit search engines, that rely heavily on group feedback. When you set up a swicki, you need to choose among “standard, video or pro.” Then you add a couple websites, blogs, ect. that your swicki will then weigh in more heavily in the search results.

Then you need to add a couple words to the tag cloud, which is like a collection of the most popular key words. The more often a key word is used, the bigger it gets in the tag cloud, and the less frequently it is used, the smaller is gets. The editor of the swicki may add or delete words from the tag cloud at any time, whenever she feels it is necessary. Here is the current tag cloud of Radiology Search Engine:

When your swicki is published, anybody may be able to use it just like a standard search engine, and anybody can copy the source code to their blog or website so that your swicki will become available from their site as well, and they all can contribute to the continued growth of the swicki.

The interesting aspect of the swicki search results, is that each individual result may be voted on, so that they either move up or down the list. Google is beginning to implement this idea into their engine as well, though it is still being beta tested.

According to the company - Eurekster - behind the swicki technology, there are over 100,000 swickis already, and this number is continually growing. Some of the most popular swickis are that maintained by Popular Science, and TechCrunch.

If you need more information about swickis, you may take the 16 slide Eurekster tour, where you can find out all about swickis. If you are ready, you may begin building your new swicki here.

Further information:

• How to find pertinent information in imaging?
• Eurekster company website
• About swickis on TechCruch.com

- Andras

I am happy to announce that we have closed yet another chapter in the book of the search page I mentioned to you a while back. This project is the SeekRadiology project and its aim is to bring together all the pertinent search engines in diagnostic imaging on one clear page so that you may use them all at once to find information on the Web.

On the search page, you may now search with:

• Yottalook
• Goldminer
• RadiologySearch
• X-ray Links
• and Google

Note that, if you enter your key words into the text box and hit enter, your search will be automatically transferred to Google! If you would like to use any of the above mentioned search engines, just click on the box with their names and your search will be transferred to their websites.

Since you have 4 engines dedicated to finding information regarding dianostic imaging, and you have Google for all your other needs, SeekRadiology is your perfect choice as start page in your browser! Make it your starting point today!

As always, feedback is always appreciated, in fact, embedded in the site is a forum software with which you may leave your feedback on the search page for anybody to see. It takes a bit hunting though :)!

Enjoy!

- Andras

The upcoming European Society of Radiology conference is scheduled between the 6-10th of March, 2009, and it is going to be held in Vienna, Austria. More precisely the location is going to be: Austria Center Vienna, Bruno Kreisky Platz 1, AT - 1220 Vienna, Austria.

Abstracts for this event may be uploaded from the 4th of July, 2008, and you may find the general guidelines here:

You are cordially invited to visit the ECR 2009 Electronic Abstract Submission System (EASS) at www.myESR.org (open from July 4) to submit your abstract(s) online. The system provides detailed instructions and guidelines for submission. To access the EASS, please use your login and password from previous years.

All abstracts for papers or posters (scientific and educational exhibits) for ECR 2009 must be submitted by September 18, 2008 at the latest, in order to be considered by the board of reviewers.

Please observe the deadline to ensure the evaluation of your submission.
Abstracts must not exceed 250 words and should be structured as follows:

* Scientific papers and exhibits:
* Purpose - Methods and Materials - Results - Conclusion
* Educational exhibits:
* Learning Objectives - Background - Imaging Findings or Procedure Details - Conclusion

You can edit or delete your abstract online at any time before September 18, 2008. If you wish to withdraw your paper after that date, you must inform the ESR Office in writing by e-mail or fax in order to allow for a replacement.

Please note that only digital material will be allowed for oral presentations. It can be submitted online prior to ECR 2009 and/or be transferred from the speaker’s CD-ROM, DVD, Zip disk or USB device to a central server onsite at least 2 hours prior to the session. Computers connected to data projectors are provided in each lecture room for the speaker to retrieve the saved data. Own laptops may not be used.
Scientific and Educational exhibits will be presented electronically in EPOSTM, the Electronic Presentation Online System. Once an abstract has been accepted for poster presentation, the digital material must be uploaded to EPOSTM from December 1, 2008 to January 30, 2009.

If your scientific paper abstract is accepted for oral presentation at ECR 2009, we will offer you the additional option to present your digital material in EPOSTM.
Presenters of accepted scientific papers (no first or second authors), who are also ESR members for 2008, can attend the ECR free of charge. ESR membership fee for 2008 must be paid by October 31, 2008.

Notifications of acceptance and guidelines for presentation will be available by November 2008.

I hope to see you there!

Further reading:

• European Radiology Society website

- Andras

When the iPhone came out I said: “I gotta have one of this!” As I am entering the last year of medical school and edging more towards real clinical imaging work in the field of nuclear medicine I say : “I need one of these as soon as possible!”

I wrote about how iPhones could be used in diagnostic imaging and why all radiologist should carry one in their pockets wherever they go, but now PET/CT readers have a reason to do so as well. MimVista has just recently come out with a multi-modality imaging software for the iPhone that is absolutely mind blowing.

You may not only view PET/CT combined data on your phone, but you may use all those tools that you are used to on a workstation. For example:

• find the contour of the lesion in 3D
• calculate min. and max. SUV values
• calculate the volume of the lesion.

And that is just of the many uses of this software that soon may change the way we learn and work!

Take a look at this video to find out more about this emerging technology:

Further reading:

• MimVista official website
• Pdf. about the algorithm used
• Dalai”s PACS Blog

- Andras

This is for our Hungarian readers mostly, but hopefully in the near future I may also recommend Radiologia.hu to our English speaking readers as well. In the mean time you won’t find anything but a short sentence when you visit the above mentioned URL that says: “We are launching soon!” It fact, I am beta testing the site at the moment and it is looking very promising, indeed! I am sure it will be ready for launch in week or so. I will keep you updated on all developments concerning this medical portal.

It is official! Toshiba’s new Aquilion One scanner is out! After 10 years and 500 millions dollars of development, new 320-slice scanners are going online in select hospitals in three major U.S. cities: Baltimore, Boston and Las Vegas. Toshiba gets the last laugh having been previously outpaced by one of its major competitors, Philips Medical Systems. The technological details are impressive:

• It uses 320 ultra-high-resolution x-ray detectors, each half a millimeter wide
• The detector rotates every 350 msec
• Single pass of the brain provides the volumetric data to produce CT angiogram, venogram, digital subtraction angiogram, and whole-brain perfusion images
• A whole heart can be captured in a single rotation
• All this with even less radiation burden on the patient

According to the official website your hospital may save considerable amounts of money, if this machine is used in events such as acute chest pain and stroke. For example, in practice this is how it would work out. Let’s suppose a patient comes in with acute chest pain. You examine him, take an ECG reading, order a CT scan, or a nuclear stress scan, and then finally send him to intervention cardiology, where he receives his proper treatment (a stent for example). It is estimated that all this would cost around twice as much (and much more time) as having him lay down in an Aquilion One, and then send him to intervention. I see their point, but I think that this does not hold for all cases as implied by the company website. The emphasis should be on proper events!

By the end of the day it is about people’s lives and correct diagnosis, so I am happy that new advances in technology are helping us achieve those goals easier. If anybody has any images taken with such a high resolution scanner (does not necessarily have to be with this particular type), please email it to us!

Further reading:

• Toshiba America Medical Systems
• Diagnostic Imaging Scan Business Daily

- Andras

Next time you are flying to a conference make sure to keep an eye out for yet another technological wonder near you: whole body scanners have already been installed at 10 major U.S. Airports! Unfortunately, these won’t find enlarged lymph nodes, nor will they tell the security guard whether you have scoliosis, but then again, he would care very little about that. He would be much more interested instead in whatever you are hiding under your clothes. With these so called millimeter scanners it is literally possible to look under someone’s clothes! Freaky, isn’t it?

As far as the technology behind it, I could not find any explanations about it anywhere except for this:

• “The scanners bounce harmless ‘millimeter waves’ off passengers…”
• “You can actually see the sweat on someone’s back…”
• “The scanners do a good job seeing under clothing but cannot see through plastic or rubber materials that resemble skin…”

That is not a thorough explanation, but it is scary. Especially if you read that these will eventually replace metal detectors.

I don’t know about you, but I would rather see more effort put into medical imaging.

Further reading:

• Usatoday.com article

- Andras

- In the first edition of this series I covered Optimus Maximus, Optimus Mini and Optimus Tactus. Since then a couple other companies came out with novel, and sometimes shocking ideas, so I gathered you another list. I hope you will find yourself the one that will make your heart skip a beat.

1. First of all here is the flattest full size no-key keyboard of all time by designer Kong Fanwen. It looks great, and it would make any of your co-workers drool, but it has no tactile feedback, and I wonder how much pressure it may stand. Don’t drop this one, though, cause it would not do you much good trying to glue the broken pieces of glass back together. It truly is beautiful; no question about that!

(Click on image to view original article)

2. This one if for those who get green with envy looking at most Macs that have an illuminated keyboard. Now you can have it on a PC! So if you hate turning the lights off while looking at x-rays and typing at the same time, this one is for you.

(Click on image to view original article)

3. Art is at the heart of a great concept and Japanese artist, Kazuharu Sakura knows that too well. He creates astonishing pieces of art, and here is the latest of his work: a leather keyboard. Image touching nothing but soft leather while working on your computer! That is a bit too luxurious, so if you get one of these do not leave it at the office. Rest assured, take it with you if you go out to the lavatory!

4. Maximus was so popular in our first edition, I had to take a look around their headquarters as well. Here is what I found: Optimus Upravlator. There is word on the street that it is more like a grown up version of the Optimus Mini we discussed previously. It is an input device, but after all, most of Artlebedev’s products should be called input devices rather than keyboards. “It features a 10.8 inch color LCD (800 ×600 pixels resolution) with 12 see-through buttons occupying its surface. Each of them has five contact points—center, top, bottom, left and right—freely assignable to user interface elements in the software of your choice.”

Happy shopping everyone!

Further reading:

• Astonishing Japanese Art
• Artlebedev company website

- Andras