Yottalook Takes Radiology Web Searching to a New Level - www.yottalook.com

BALTIMORE, MD - A team of medical imaging clinicians and researchers announced today the launch of a free, radiology-centric vertical search engine that rapidly identifies and retrieves relevant images from within peer-reviewed articles on the Web. Yottalook TM, developed specifically for radiology practitioners across the spectrum of imaging practice and available at www.Yottalook.com, offers the potential for access to a wide range of context-specific images and full-text references that can be delivered instantly at the point of care.

A Sign of the Times. The development group at iVirtuoso, Inc., looked to the past in choosing January 5 for the open access launch of the search engine. “This is the 111th anniversary of the announcement of Röntgen’s discovery of the X-ray, when the first shadowy radiograph was published in a Vienna newspaper,” says Khan M. Siddiqui, MD, a member of the research and development team that built the engine. “On that day, only one X-ray image was available. Today, millions of images from different modalities are added to databases around the world each hour. The challenge for all of us is to find ways to identify the most useful information, the best images, and the most relevant resources. Yottalook takes this challenge seriously, by bringing the on-demand power of discriminating search techniques directly to the radiologist.”

How Does It Work? Yottalook is based on the familiar Google indexing technology, powered by a proprietary relevance algorithm developed by the iVirtuoso research team. The engine searches only medical imaging sources on the Web, screening out the hundreds of thousands of non-relevant references or images that might be retrieved from a routine keyword search. By clicking on Yottalook Images, the user has instant access to more than 100,000 images drawn from articles in the peer-reviewed literature, including options to narrow searches by modality, gender, age group, and to compare pathology images with radiologic results. Yottalook References provides the Web’s most responsive medical imaging search tool, focusing only on online resources and providing full-text access to relevant articles and tools to refine searches for rapid focus on topics of interest, such as online teaching files.

What’s a Yotta? “We wanted a name that would reflect the rapidly expanding scope of imaging information available on the Web,” says Siddiqui. ‘Yotta’ is the International System of Units prefix denoting 1024 and the largest prefix to be formally introduced. “Plus the double entendre was irresistible,” adds Siddiqui. “We all find ourselves sitting at workstations thinking we should search the Web for more information or additional images on a specific topic, but the task is just too time-consuming to attempt during regular clinical workflow. Our response is ‘yotta’ do that search, and we’ve provided the tool to help you do it effectively and efficiently.”

A Growing, Global Effort. The team will continue to develop and refine Yottalook’s capabilities after the January 5 launch. The addition of image preview is planned, as well as tools to personalize the search experience for users. Like any good search engine, Yottalook will also grow in scope and relevance as more researchers use it. Yottalook is iterative, in that it ‘learns’ from searches and ranks responses by their previous usefulness to other users. “We are especially encouraged by the initial international response to our limited beta release of Yottalook,” says Siddiqui. “This engine has the potential to take entire libraries of cutting-edge resources directly to radiologists in developing nations who previously would have had great difficulty in searching through the growing mass of information available on the Web. We’re confident that Yottalook will prove an extraordinarily useful tool to the entire global imaging community––researchers, clinicians, and academicians––regardless of their location or practice setting.”

Media representatives: For more information and references to articles about iVirtuoso, to arrange an interview with one of the iVirtuoso principals, or for a “virtual guided tour” of the advantages Yottalook brings to medical imaging information identification and retrieval, contact Chief Technology Officer Steve Severance at 240-472-9645 or by e-mail at steve@ivirtuoso.com.

About iVirtuoso:
iVirtuoso, Inc., is headquartered in the technology corridor between Washington, DC, and Baltimore, MD, and offers a comprehensive suite of services to the radiology industry, including imaging practices and vendors, to help in addressing current challenges and anticipating future change and technological development.

The internationally recognized iVirtuoso principals have extensive experience and a proven track record in clinical and technical aspects of medical imaging and informatics. Drawn from academic, government, and private practices, the group has cumulative experience with a broad range of technology configurations and services, ranging from needs assessment and review to process engineering to assistance with integration. Additional information can be found online at http://www.iVirtuoso.com.