A WORLDWIDE WEB RADIOLOGY TEACHING FILE SERVER ON THE INTERNET

OBJECTIVE. Radiology departments have traditionally used film-based co llections of interesting cases for teaching purposes. Film-based files are expensive to create and duplicate, and they physically occupy con siderable space, As one solution to these problems, our department cre ated an on-line radiology teaching file in digital format. MATERIALS A ND METHODS. Our teaching file resides on a Macintosh Quadra 700 comput er that is connected to the Internet, a worldwide network of interconn ected computers, via our campus Ethernet network. Our digital teaching file images and text are composed in HyperText Markup Language (HTML) and are made available to the world with Webserver software known as MacHTTP. These teaching files are accessed using World-Wide Web (WWW) client software such as Mosaic, MacWeb, or Netscape. RESULTS, Our digi tal teaching file is available at no charge to anyone in the world wit h access to the Internet and WWW client software, Our radiology reside nts can access this file via several workstations in our department, M osaic is an easy-to-use interface, and the use of our digital teaching file has increased significantly, in the 3 months since its creation, our teaching file has been accessed not only by our radiology residen ts but also by hundreds of other users in 33 countries. CONCLUSION. Us e of Mosaic and the WWW format has resulted in an easy-to-use hypertex t interface to the Internet, which allows even persons with little com puter experience to navigate through the Internet, read text files, vi ew images (stills and movies), and download files by merely pointing w ith the mouse and clicking on items of interest. This has allowed us t o maintain a central teaching file that is physically small and easy t o share with all the hospitals in our system, We invite the worldwide radiology community to access these files and to submit cases from the ir own teaching files to share with the rest of the world.