Radiological information searching on the Internet: data banks, search machines and intelligent agents

Abstract

The Internet plays an important role in a growing number of medical applications. Finding relevant information is not always easy as the amount of available information on the Web is rising quickly. Even the best search engines can only collect links to a fraction of all existing Web pages. In addition, many of these indexed documents have been changed or deleted. The vast majority of information on the Web is not searchable with conventional methods. New search strategies, technologies and standards are combined in intelligent search agents (ISA) and robots, which can retrieve desired information in a specific approach. The article describes differences between ISAs and conventional search engines and how communication between agents improves their ability to find information. Examples of existing ISAs are given and the possible influences on the current and future work in radiology is discussed.