THE NETWORKED MULTIMEDIA TEXTBOOK - DISTRIBUTING RADIOLOGY MULTIMEDIAINFORMATION ACROSS THE INTERNET

OBJECTIVE. The purpose of this project was to create an approach for g lobal radiology multimedia publishing using the Internet that would ad dress the two largest problems facing radiology multimedia publishers today: the high percentage of radiologists who are computer novices an d the variety of personal computers (Macintosh, Microsoft Windows/IBM- PC, X-Windows, Amiga) whose software is incompatible. MATERIALS AND ME THODS. We developed a client/server approach to multimedia publishing, the networked multimedia textbook, that has a simple booklike user in terface to facilitate use by computer novices. Once created, a network ed multimedia textbook can be viewed on all current popular personal c omputers. The networked multimedia textbook is based on the Internet, World-Wide Web, Mosaic, and Wide Area Information Servers software tec hnologies, all of which are in the public domain. RESULTS. We created six radiology networked multimedia textbooks. CONCLUSION. This network ed multimedia textbook approach for the global distribution of multime dia radiology information brings the benefits of multimedia publishing on the Internet to radiologists today.