Collaborative Hypertext of Radiology

About CHORUS

Collaborative Hypertext of Radiology

Overview

CHORUS is a "quick reference" hypertext for physicians and medical students. More than 1,100 documents describe:

diseases,
radiological findings,
differential-diagnosis lists ("gamuts"), and
pertinent anatomy, pathology, and physiology.

CHORUS documents are indexed topically by organ system and alphabetically by title. Docments are interconnected by a network of more than 2,200 hyperlinks.

CHORUS was developed using a "peer review" process that allowed Web-based submission and anonymous review of documents. All CHORUS documents have been reviewed (and updated as needed) within the past two years; the date of most recent update is indicated on each document.

Background

CHORUS is based on Fact/File, a radiology hypertext reference that was integrated with the clinical radiology information system at the University of Chicago in 1990. Fact/File has been used extensively, mostly by radiology residents who use it for quick review and for diagnostic decision support. To the original set of 810 documents, 12 authors contributed more than 400 documents.

Metadata

CHORUS documents have been enhanced to include metadata (document descriptions) using the Dublin Core framework. To facilitate searches, our documents are indexed using Medical Subject Heading (MeSH) terms of the U.S. National Library of Medicine.

The CHORUS Logo

The figure is a detail of the François vase (the volute-krater of Kleitias, c. 570 B.C.), in which Theseus in festival dress leads the victory dance at Delos.

The Athenians were forced by King Minos of Crete to send a tribute of seven youths and seven maidens to be exposed to the Minotaur in his maze-like keep, the Labyrinth. Theseus sailed to Crete, threaded the maze with the help of the ball of thread given him by Minos' daughter, Ariadne, slew the Minotaur, rescued the fourteen, and followed the thread out of the Labyrinth. Then, he and the fourteen celebrated their deliverance by a dance, in which they mimed the process of their exit hand in hand.

Choral dance was a widespread phenomenon of ancient Greek culture, and arose much earlier than the dramatic chorus. The illustration symbolizes our collaborative effort to share medical knowledge.

Awards

	CHORUS was named as one of the Top 5% of all Web sites in terms of content, presentation, and overall quality!
	McKinley's Magellan service rated CHORUS among the leading Web sites.
	CHORUS was a recipient of Links2Go's "Key Resource" Award.
	CHORUS was included in the BioMedLink database of bio/medical Internet resources.
	... and numerous others

Publications

Kahn CE Jr. A radiology hypertext system for education and clinical decision making. Journal of Digital Imaging 1991; 4:207-212. PubMed PDF
Kahn CE Jr. Artificial intelligence in radiology: decision support systems. RadioGraphics 1994; 14:849-861. PubMed PDF
Kahn CE Jr, Cheong CPF. Computer-supported collaboration in radiology: a multi-author, peer-reviewed reference hypertext published via the Internet. Radiology 1994; 193(P):478 (abstract).
Kahn CE Jr. CHORUS: a computer-based radiology handbook for international collaboration via the World Wide Web. RadioGraphics 1995; 15(4):963-970. PubMed PDF

Support

Supported in part by a U.S. Public Health Service grant from the National Library of Medicine (USPHS G08 LM05705) for Integrated Advanced Information Management Systems (IAIMS) planning at the Medical College of Wisconsin.

Charles E. Kahn, Jr., MD, Editor
1 October 2013