Medical images at your fingertips

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Attorneys that specialize in Personal Injury or medical issues usually have an extensive collection of medical resources. For others looking for medical images, a great place to start is the Medical Image Databases on the Internet maintained by University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio (UTHSCSA). This site has an extensive listing of online resources (over 30 databases at the time of this writing).

The librarians at UTHSCSA library have added value to this collection by outlining permissions and restrictions. They also clearly identify the source (e.g. Yale School of Medicine). Please note that some databases are subscription based. In addition, one I tried, “Net Anatomy” indicated that access was limited to institutional subscriptions.

However, for the most part, the databases are accessible. Examples include Harvard’s “Whole Brain Atlas.” It provides hundreds of amazing images including a normal brain, neoplastic disease, Alzheimer’s disease, and many others. Another is the “Interactive Dermatology Atlas.” The “Instant Anatomy” database describes itself as “website with illustrations of the Human Body to aid the learning of Human Anatomy with diagrams.”

UTHSCSA library’s webpage is a quality site reviewed by librarians. It provides a central location for medical images, saving the researcher time.