Radiopaedia Blog: Projects

You may have noticed that some links in Radiopaedia are grey (dead) rather than blue (active). They indicate a link to a not-yet-existing article; as soon as it is written that article turns blue and is correctly linked. 

Over the last month or so we challenged our editors to write 5 new articles each hence turning many grey links blue. 

At the end of this project, it's not just fifty grey-shaded links that changed color. Collectively a staggering 115 new articles were created by our editors. A special note of appreciation goes to Craig Hacking who contributed 54 new articles alone, Frank Gaillard (11), Andrew Murphy (10), and Vincent Tatco (7).

Here are just a few: 

• ameloblastic fibro-odontoma - Pir Abdul Ahad Aziz
• normal pediatric imaging examples - Ian Bickle
• ligament of Treitz - Yair Glick
• phenytoin cerebellar degeneration - Frank Gaillard
• tibioperoneal trunk - Craig Hacking
• mediastinum (ITMIG classification) - Henry Knipe
• cervical enlargement - Owen Kang
• single contrast barium enema - Matt Morgan
• windowing (CT) - Andrew Murphy
• incidental findings on trauma CT - Vikas Shah
• double switch procedure - Vincent Tatco

We hope to have inspired our fellow radiology-minded professionals to also contribute new articles. So next time you see a grey link and realize that article is yet to be written, feel free to fade away some grey links yourself.

Have a look at our instructions if you don't know where to start. Our community is there to help and expand whatever you start out with.

In many cases it’s just best to adequately describe your findings, but every radiologist knows about the myriad of classification and grading systems out there. 

Radiopaedia.org often comes to the rescue if you come across an obscure classification and even for often used ones if you just can’t remember its details or considerations. 

However, it’s also good to know if a classification is still being used or when it was last updated. And on a historical note it’s just nice to find out how it developed and who came up with it.

Over the last months a team of our editors (Piotr Gołofit, Varun Babu, Praveen Jha, Matthew Morgan, Frank Gaillard, Jeremy Jones and yours truly) worked together on “Operation Bookworm” to provide just that information for almost 170 classifications and gradings at Radiopaedia.org, also giving these articles a small facelift where needed. That’s about a third of our articles on classifications and gradings.

Some examples:

• Rockwood classification of acromioclavicular joint injury
• CT severity index in acute pancreatitis
• Salter-Harris classification
• Rotterdam CT score of traumatic brain injury
• 2014 WHO classification of endometrial stromal tumors
• ASIA impairment scale for spinal injury

We believe that these additions are very relevant to everyday clinical practice and welcome everyone to help keeping them up to date and add this information in the remaining articles. 

This project is a great example of ongoing critical appraisal of existing content at Radiopaedia.org, illustrating the dynamic and cooperative nature of a community based encyclopedia that everyone can use and contribute to for free and forever.

We hope you enjoy it!

Tim Luijkx is a Radiopaedia senior editor, and radiology registrar at the Meander Medical Center in Amersfoort, the Netherlands Twitter: @TimLuijkx NB: Opinions expressed are those of the author alone, and are not those of his employer nor of Radiopaedia.org.