<title>Prototype client/server application for biomedical text/image retrieval on the Internet</title>

Abstract

At the Lister Hill National Center for Biomedical Communications, a research and development division of the National Library of Medicine (NLM), a prototype image database retrieval system has been built. This medical information retrieval system (MIRS) is a client/server application which provides Internet access to biomedical databases, including both text search/retrieval and retrieval/display of medical images associated with the text records. The MIRS graphical user interface (GUI) allows a user to formulate queries by simple, intuitive interactions with screen buttons, list boxes, and edit boxes; these interactions create structured query language (SQL) queries, which are submitted to a database manager running at NLM. The result of a MIRS query is a display showing both scrollable text records and scrollable images returned for all of the 'hits' of the query. MIRS is designed as an information-delivery vehicle intended to provide access to multiple collections of medical text and image data. The database used for initial MIRS evaluation consists of national survey data collected by the National Center for Health Statistics, including 17,000 spinal x-ray images. This survey, conducted on a sample of 27,801 persons, collected demographic, socioeconomic, and medical information, including both interview results and results acquired by direct examination by physician.