EURORAD, the EAR database project

Purpose: EURORAD is a database of the European Association of Radiology acc essible on the World Wide Web (http:// www.eurorad.org/). It is devoted to diagnostic imaging and can be used for routine practice, training and resea rch mostly but not exclusively by radiologists. Methods and Materials: The project is partly funded by the European Commiss ion and coordinated on behalf of EAR by CITEC S.p.A. The main aim of the pr oject is to build a database accessible on Internet. containing thousands o f cases covering all radiological subspecialties. The peer-review process i s organized as to guarantee quality assurance standards established in scie ntific journals. Results: EURORAD is based on a collection of multimedia case records. Each anonymous case record contains at least one radiological document, still im age or movie, and a text file for case comment with key words and codes (AC R and MeSH). The providers are individual radiologists, European academic r adiologic centers, excellence centers selected by subspeciality societies, or invited institutions directly contacted by the EURORAD partners. Submiss ion is done on Internet. The authors are requested to submit images under J PEG format and DICOM format when available. The reviewing process follows a three levels system with one Editor-in Chief (Pr A Baert), 14 section edit ors covering the different subspecialties and approximately 10 reviewers by subspecialty. Each case is submitted to an anonymous peer-review. All exch anges between authors and section editors and between the three categories of reviewers are done on Internet. Conclusion: EURORAD will be a demonstration of the ability of European radi ologists to use advanced multimedia tools and advanced information technolo gies for dissemination of high quality scientific content.