Cases

Cases are your personal collection, shared with the greater Radiopaedia.org community. Many of you may wonder which cases will make the greatest contribution to global radiology education. In general, these are cases with a near certain diagnosis with good-quality imaging that illustrates important diagnostic features. If you are inexperienced, ask your local radiologists for suggestions. People will remember you for the quality of your cases! You can also keep personal cases that don’t meet Radiopaedia ideals in your own ‘unlisted’ library.

We do claim ownership of the images you upload (see terms of use); you merely make them available for use by others under the Creative Commons NC-BY-SA license.

Awesome cases will be selected by our editorial board to be featured on the Radiopaedia.org homepage (see previously featured cases) as well as to be promoted on our various social media channels (e.g. Facebook and TwitterX (twitter)). 

Each month one case from the preceding month is chosen by the Featured Case Committee as the Case of the Month.

Which cases should you upload?

Many of you may wonder which cases will make the greatest contribution to global radiology education, and whether a case needs to be of a rare condition to be worthy.

The simple answer is any case is reasonable provided:

• the diagnosis has been established with near certainty:

  • Certain or Almost Certaindiagnostic certainty is needed for most new contributions

  • we are slowly phasing out Possible cases

• good-quality imaging that illustrates important diagnostic features

  • technically good quality images (see image preparation)

  • exported without text overlays

If you are inexperienced, ask your local radiologists for suggestions. People will remember you for the quality of your cases! And don't forget, you can also keep personal cases that don’t meet publishing standards in your own unlisted case library.

Patient anonymity

It is essential that patients cannot be identified from the images and accompanying text. Obviously, that means that no direct patient information should be included (e.g. name, date of birth, address, etc.) but it also means that particularly rare conditions can be problematic given that they are linked to your account, which geographically narrows their origin. Similarly, if you work in a small community, de-identification may not be sufficient to prevent identification. See the Patient Confidentiality section of our terms of use. 

As such, if in doubt we suggest you obtain patient-informed consent to upload cases.  Download our consent form here. 

Achievement

The "Collector" achievement on your profile page reflects the number of public cases that you have published and that have been approved during the moderation process. 

How to upload cases

The best way to get to know the ins and outs of uploading cases is to go through our learning pathway: 

• Creating Cases: Learning Pathway

Depending on your situation, you may be able to use one of our uploaders.  Alternatively, you can do everything you need through your browser. 

Types of cases

Currently, there are three types of cases: draft, public and unlisted. 

Draft cases are there for you to work on, prior to 'publishing them'. All users have access to 10 draft cases at any time. Read more about draft cases.

Public cases are by far the most common. They are visible to all users and can be used in playlists and articles. There is no limit whatsoever to the number of public cases each user can have. Read more about public cases.

Unlisted cases are there for you to use in special circumstances. They are not visible to other users, but you can still share them easily with others. All users have access to 10 unlisted cases at any time. Read more about unlisted cases.

Important components of a case

• anatomy of the perfect case

• patient confidentiality

• text

  • patient's presenting symptoms

• images / series

  • images

  • stacks

  • image preparation

• attributes and selection tools

  • flagged images

  • key image

How to download cases

Anyone can download individual images from cases; just use the little cloud icon over the top left corner of the main case view.  

Additionally, there are two ways you can download entire cases: zip of the original files and offline presentation mode. 

Zip of originals

Firstly, all users can download their own cases as a zip that contains images nicely arranged in folders as well as a file with all the text of the case. This is not available for other contributor's cases as this is intended as a way to download your cases as a personal backup.

This is available as "Download originals" from the little cog drop down to the right of the case. 

Offline presentation mode

Secondly, Marie Curie (Radium) Supporters can also download any contributor's public cases and public playlists as playable presentation-mode files for use offline without any of the pesky ads or annoying delays while the images load. This is intended to facilitate teaching. Note: these files contain all the images but not in a human-friendly format/organisation. 

This is available as "Download case" also from the little cog drop down to the right of the case.