[Implementation of a server World Wide Web of radiology accessible by Internet]

Internet is an international computer network that uses standard communication protocols for the exchange of information. This facilitates the retrieval of multimedia data through a "web" of servers distributed in the whole world. Among Internet users, Radiologists are a potentially important segment, due to the inherent multimedia characteristics of the discipline, which requires a continuous international update of information. The Department of Radiology of the University of Pisa has an Internet access through the metropolitan area network which was installed in the framework of the CNR Telecomunicazioni Project. The Internet access allowed the implementation of a World Wide Web server made public on Internet in March, 1994, being the first European server specifically oriented to radiology. This server can be accessed at the following address: http:@www.rad.unipi.it:7080/IRMosaicHome.html . On the server, 3 hypermedia papers are present, a list of international servers containing radiological information, a questionnaire, and statistics concerning the number of users who accessed the server. In the first 18 months of public access through Internet (April 1, 1994-September 30, 1995) 16,166 users accessed the server, retrieving 127,349 documents, corresponding to 1,279.7 MByte of information. The mean amount of information retrieved in each access to the server in the considered quarters ranges from 72 to 85.8 kByte. The geographic distribution of the users who accessed the server is the following: United States, 7,158, Italy, 2,466; other European countries, 3,813; other extra-European countries, 2,729. The increasingly diffuse knowledge of Internet services had a substantial impact on the rise in number of the servers and of the users who can access them. It is likely that in the future this technology will be used with increasing interest by Radiologists, since it provides easier "navigation" through multimedia information, consisting of text and several images, without the inherent limitations of the printed paper.