Radiopaedia is a wiki-based international collaborative educational web resource containing a
radiology encyclopedia and imaging case repository.
It is currently the largest freely available
radiology
Radiology ( ) is the medical discipline that uses medical imaging to diagnose diseases and guide their treatment, within the bodies of humans and other animals. It began with radiography (which is why its name has a root referring to radiat ...
related resource in the world with more than 50,000 patient cases and over 16,000 reference articles on radiology-related topics. The open edit nature of articles allows
radiologists
Radiology ( ) is the medical discipline that uses medical imaging to diagnose diseases and guide their treatment, within the bodies of humans and other animals. It began with radiography (which is why its name has a root referring to radiatio ...
, radiology trainees, radiographers, sonographers, and other healthcare professionals interested in medical imaging to refine most content through time. An editorial board
peer reviews
Peer review is the evaluation of work by one or more people with similar competencies as the producers of the work ( peers). It functions as a form of self-regulation by qualified members of a profession within the relevant field. Peer review ...
all contributions.
Background
Radiopaedia was started as a past-time project to store radiology notes and cases online by the Australian
neuroradiologist
Neuroradiology is a subspecialty of radiology focusing on the diagnosis and characterization of abnormalities of the central and peripheral nervous system, spine, and head and neck using neuroimaging techniques. Medical issues utilizing neuroradio ...
Associate Professor Frank Gaillard in December 2005, while he was a radiology resident. He later became passionate in building the website and decided to release it on the web, advocating free dissemination of knowledge.
The domain name for radiopaedia.org was registered on 11 January 2007.
The Radiopaedia.org platform and text content are owned by Radiopaedia Australia
Pty Ltd
A proprietary company, the characteristic of which is abbreviated as "Pty", is a form of privately held company in Australia, Namibia and South Africa that is either limited company, limited or unlimited company, unlimited. However, unlike a pu ...
, a privately held company for which Gaillard is the chief executive officer.
One of its investors is Investling and its revenue derives from ads, courses, and paid supporters.
For image content, contributors reserve some rights and license the content to Radiopaedia and its users under a
Creative Commons license
A Creative Commons (CC) license is one of several public copyright licenses that enable the free distribution of an otherwise copyrighted "work".A "work" is any creative material made by a person. A painting, a graphic, a book, a song/lyrics ...
.
The site was initially programmed using
MediaWiki
MediaWiki is a free and open-source wiki software. It is used on Wikipedia and almost all other Wikimedia websites, including Wiktionary, Wikimedia Commons and Wikidata; these sites define a large part of the requirement set for MediaWiki ...
, the same program platform as
Wikipedia
Wikipedia is a multilingual free online encyclopedia written and maintained by a community of volunteers, known as Wikipedians, through open collaboration and using a wiki-based editing system. Wikipedia is the largest and most-read refer ...
, but now runs on a bespoke code written b
TrikeApps
In 2010, almost all of the article and image collection from radswiki (a similar wiki-based radiology educational site) was donated to Radiopaedia.
Its article content is currently limited to English.
Purpose
Radiopaedia’s mission is "to create the best radiology reference the world has ever seen and to make it available for free, for ever, for all."
Its intention is to benefit the radiology community and wider society and it relies on benevolent collaborations from radiologists and others with an interest in medical imaging.
Similarly to
Wikipedia
Wikipedia is a multilingual free online encyclopedia written and maintained by a community of volunteers, known as Wikipedians, through open collaboration and using a wiki-based editing system. Wikipedia is the largest and most-read refer ...
, registered users of the site are allowed to freely add and edit the majority of the content. This allows content to be progressively upgraded over years and for radiologists and society, in general, to continuously refine article content through time. The site also allows registered users to maintain their own personal case library of teaching cases. Rather than individually publishing articles, users are encouraged to integrate content with links to cases and journal articles and collaboratively refine content. In an attempt to reduce vandalism and to peer-review content, an editorial board moderates changes to ensure that the presented material is as accurate and relevant as possible.
As with similar open edit sites, unreliability of content has been a concern; however, despite its open edit nature, it is ranked relatively high among user reviews.
A survey done in 2020 shows that 90% of on-call radiology trainees in the United States are using Radiopedia and StatDx as the first and second line options to help them during their work.
Educational benefit was also demonstrated when integrating Radiopedia-based training in medical curriculum.
Sub sites
Radiopaedia also maintains several other educational subsites which include
*Radiology Signs - a
tumblr
Tumblr (stylized as tumblr; pronounced "tumbler") is an American microblogging and social networking website founded by David Karp in 2007 and currently owned by Automattic. The service allows users to post multimedia and other content to a sho ...
feed with selected signs
*Radiology Channel - a
YouTube
YouTube is a global online video platform, online video sharing and social media, social media platform headquartered in San Bruno, California. It was launched on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim. It is owned by ...
channel containing educational videos
Editorial team
The editorial team, develop as well as help users to maintain the high-quality content of the website.
The current editorial board (2021) is composed of individuals from a variety of countries and includes:
Editor in chief
* Frank Gaillard
Academic director
* Andrew Dixon
Community director
* Jeremy Jones
Editorial director
* Henry Knipe
Managing editors
* Daniel J Bell
* Ian Bickle
* Andrew Murphy
iPhone, iPad and iOS apps
In 2009, the first Radiopaedia iPhone app was released. These teaching files package cases and articles for users to review and have sample questions and answers.
* Brain
* Gastrointestinal and hepatobiliary
* Musculoskeletal
* Paediatrics
* Chest
* Head and Neck
These have been released in two forms:
* LITE : 10 full cases
* FULL : 50–80 cases; the initial 50 have been supplemented in some cases.
Teaching files for the iPad were released in mid-2010. The first of its kind. These have currently been released for
* Brain
* Head and Neck
* Musculoskeletal
In 2012, Radiopaedia released a new version of its iOS application which is a universal app with in-app purchases for case packs.
Copyright
Most of the content is shared under a
Creative Commons non-commercial license.
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References
{{reflist
Encyclopedias of medicine
Medical websites