Radiopaedia.org
It is really really simple. You don't have to ask permission. You don't have to send in your CV or references. Just register (which only takes 60 seconds) and start contributing to the fastest growing radiology wiki around. It is a great way to consolidate knowledge, while simultaneously adding to a growing resource that you and your colleagues will be able to use for years to come.
Preamble
It has struck me over the years, that as a profession we each have an expensive library of textbooks, we read &/or subscribe to 'peer reviewed' journals (who are these peers?) and collect libraries of films. We then interact only with colleagues in our immediate vicinity, great cases seeing the light of day at most a few times a year during tutorials. Simultaneously when we have a presentation to prepare we scour the net to look for images, often using them without obtaining the full permission of those who hold the copyright. In addition, we each find errors in textbooks and articles which we cannot correct - each mistake causing hundreds of us to individually try and find the answer.
My idea was simple: to gather a small fraction of our collective knowledge and libraries in a single site which can act as a digital reference, without subscription fees, or copyright. A true peer reviewed site, where errors can be found and corrected, discussion on difficult or controversial topics can be had, and images submitted and used.
History of Radiopaedia.org
Radiopaedia.org was born at 23:38 on Tuesday 6th December 2005, at the time called wikiradiology, as a place to put some of my own notes, as I was studying for my fellowship RANZCR exams. This ran from a home PC server put together from salvaged parts.
At the start of 2007, I uploaded the site to a proper server, changed the name to Radiopaedia.org and gave it a face lift thanks to a skin designed by Paul Gu. It has been opened to the public since that time.
In October 2007 Radiopaedia was presented as a poster at the RANZCR Annual Scientific Meeting, which culminated a sponsorship aggreement with Toshiba (Australia) Medical Division.
Radiopaedia.org 2.0
What you are now using is the next generation of Radiopaedia.org. The site has been built from the ground up, specifically tailored to the specific needs of this site, thanks to Tricycle Developments. The graphic design has also been completely redone to allow for better cross platform compatibility.
Aim of Radiopaedia.org
So what is the aim of Radiopaedia.org? It is to develop an online resource where information is up to date and relevant to the needs of radiology staff, both registrars and consultants. There are many worthwhile online resources already, however most are not collaborative and therefore lack the ability to respond to users needs.
At Radiopaedia.org anyone can create an article. Anyone can edit an existing one. Contributions remain logged to your name, and can be included in your CV, along with a link to your User Page. Due to the immediacy of editing, new information can be introduced as soon as it becomes available. Errors can be corrected immediately, with no need to wait for the next edition.
All the content is licensed under creative commons which allows for non commercial use of all content, while maintaining attribution privileges for contributors of images. (read more here)
How big a task is this? Well, as a benchmark, Dahnert has approximately 3000 listings in the index, spread over 1200 pages. Similarly Primer of Diagnostic Imaging by Weissleder et al has approximately 3500 index entries over approximately 1000 pages. That is however, the power and beauty of collaborative work, each person need only submit a small portion. Wikipedia the grand-daddy of all wikis has over 860 000 articles, every single one written by its users.
So what are you waiting for? Sign up and start contributing.
Frank Gaillard
Founder and Editor