WWW--an effective way of teaching radiology.

The Internet and especially the World Wide Web (WWW) have given new opportunities and challenges in teaching radiology. In Kuopio University and Kuopio University Hospital, we started to develop a new WWW-based radiology teaching file in 1996. Our file was made as a result of weaknesses in other files and as an answer to our local needs. The file consists of 1245 separate radiographs in 14 different categories. The language is Finnish, because the target use primarily is basic medical education in Finland. A small part has been translated into English. The quality of images was improved using a separate viewer (Osiris, Digital Imaging Unit, University Hospital of Geneva, Switzerland), which also allowed image manipulation needed with radiological images. We have monitored the utilisation of pages (Analog 1.92 beta-3.0/UNIX) and found the results encouraging. The follow-up time was 814 days (10 February 1997-27 September 1999), the total number of requests was 762797 and that for HTML pages is 288664. Monthly means are 27243 and 10309, respectively. The total number for visited domains is 61. The URL for these pages is http://www.uku.fi/laitokset/klrad/opetuskuvasto/.