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Research Tip: Medical Image Resources

Recently, we received a chat reference question asking for recommended databases containing images of medical conditions.  These three are available through our databases link:  https://library.mednet.iu.edu/databases/

Bates Visual Guide to Examination – Now in its Fifth Edition and featuring completely reshot content and new clinical skills videos, Bates’ Visual Guide to Physical Examination delivers head-to-toe and systems-based physical examination techniques for the (Advanced) Assessment or Introduction to Clinical Medicine course. The site features more than 8 hours of video content.

Visual DX – VisualDx® is a clinical decision support system that helps clinicians recognize and diagnose visually presenting conditions.

UpToDate – UpToDate® is an evidence-based, physician-authored clinical decision support resource which synthesizes the most recent medical information into trusted, evidence-based recommendations that are proven to improve patient care and quality. 

Open Access Medical Image Resources:

National Library of Medicine's MedPix

  • MedPix® is a free open-access online database of medical images, teaching cases, and clinical topics, integrating images and textual metadata including over 12,000 patient case scenarios, 9,000 topics, and nearly 59,000 images.  Visit it here:  https://medpix.nlm.nih.gov/home

Stanford Medicine – Lane Medical Library's Bio-Image Search

  • Enables discovery of biomedical images you can use i.e., images with Public Domain & Creative Commons licenses
  • Aggregates biomedical images from many image sources
  • Displays results in four groups, from broadest reuse rights to most limited reuse rights