January 5, 2007—Today a radiology search engine patterned after the familiar Google search engine, www.yottalook.com, made its debut. Yottalook is a free web service compiling over 100,000 context-specific images and full-text references searchable by keyword and multiple modifying criteria. Developed by a team of medical imaging clinicians and researchers at iVirtuoso Inc (Baltimore, Md), Yottalook screens out irrelevant references or images that could be retrieved using a standard search engine, leaving only medical imaging results.
“This is the 111th anniversary of the announcement of Röntgen’s discovery of the x-ray, when the first shadowy radiograph was published in a Vienna newspaper,” said Khan M. Siddiqui, MD, a member of the team that built the engine. “On that day, only one x-ray image was available. Today, millions of images from different modalities are added to databases around the world each hour. The challenge for all of us is to find ways to identify the most useful information, the best images, and the most relevant resources.”
Planned improvements to Yottalook include the addition of an image preview and tools to personalize the search experience. The engine is also iterative, meaning it will learn from searches and rank responses by their previous usefulness to users.
—Cat Vasko
