Radiology requires practitioners to appreciate how normal anatomy appears on imaging and to understand the basis of diseases that may be observed. Use of updated technology for imaging and the detection of abnormalities is crucial. Good image quality is vitally important if learners are to understand the abnormality correctly.
The Internet has become an excellent resource for education, not only in the field of radiology but in many other medical fields, too. Many websites provide interactive presentations and online lectures. Some specific medical search engines have also been developed.
Online learning offers an alternative to learning via textbooks or other printed materials. All you need is access to the Internet via a computer. Lectures given by leading experts can be viewed at a time that is convenient to you. Students can relisten to parts of presentations that they may have misheard or not fully understood. Further information can be found online using dedicated radiology search engines.
The Internet also makes it easier for lecturers and students to prepare presentations. Pictures, tables, and graphic information can be copied, pasted, and cropped. Time saved searching for information means more time for learning.
Portal websites provide good starting point. These sites contain links to other, specific teaching websites and act as gateways. Two examples are www.radiologyeducation.com and www.radport.com.
FAVORED SITES
Below is a selection of our favorite websites that may be helpful for radiology learning.
• www.radiologyeducation.com (Michael P. D'Alessandro, M.D.). This website contains links to online textbooks, teaching files, and online anatomy atlases, among others. The links are further subdivided into subspecialty categories. Links to search engines are also provided.
Links included on www.radiologyeducation.com must fulfill four core quality standards, they must be free to use, and the information provided must be primarily accessible in HTML.
• www.yottalook.com (Woojin Kim, M.D., William Boonn, M.D., and Nabile Safdar, M.D.). This free search engine offers five options that can help narrow the results of your search.
Yottalook Web has been designed for general searches of online radiology resources. Results can be refined further using preprepared search terms, categories, or Google tools.
Yottalook Image can be used when looking for radiological images from peer-reviewed online sources. It currently has access to over 700,000 images. Results are displayed as small image icons. The image is enlarged when a mouse is dragged over it. Clicking on the image links directly to its source: for instance, the journal Radiographics. Search results can be refined further with a modality filter, as for Yottalook Web.
Yottalook Journal has been developed for searches within radiology-related journals. Results display the full name of the article and all involved authors. Again, the modality filter will help refine search results. There is an additional refinement that allows you to find reviews of a specific topic with links.
Yottalook Anatomy focuses on higher ranking anatomic or radiographic atlases.
