AN OPHTHALMOLOGICAL PICTURE ATLAS ON THE INTERNET

The Internet has become a powerful, international source for informati on, and it has shown an exponential growth because of the ease of acce ss and the immediate availability of information. We introduced a new ophthalmological atlas including ICD coding on the World Wide Web. So far, more than 500 lantern slides of typical and interesting ophthalmo logical findings have been selected and digitized. These pictures were integrated in a data base, which was arranged for ease and speed of s earch and retrieval. In its background,the data base contains a list o f over 4700 ICD-encoded diagnoses to which the picture-documented find ings are linked. Comments on pictures can be added by the author or by users. The data base contains several lists, such as a list of ICD co des and diagnoses, a list of all pictures with corresponding diagnoses , a list of all diagnoses and number of pictures, a list of those diag noses for which the corresponding picture is available, as well as a l ist of comments on each picture. Special program scripts handle the us er's search key words for diagnoses and extract the required informati on out of the data base, using Windows NT. Search results are presente d on an automatically built-up webpage. To provide fast speed of searc h all pictures initially are shown in a small format (thumbnails) with little amount of data. The related full-size picture is retrieved by a single mouse click. Moreover, the name and institution of the author , diagnostical hints and comments on pictures by the author or by user s are offered for each diagnosis available. The Giessen Ophthalmologic al Picture Atlas can be reached under www.med.unigiessen.de in the Int ern et. It allows a fast search free of charge from all over the world and, therefore, offers an additional option to obtain specific ophtha lmological information for various purposes.