Introduction to The Journal of Medical Imaging

Sponsored by the Department of Radiology and the William H. Welch Medical Library,
School of Medicine, Johns Hopkins University

The purpose of The Journal of Medical Imaging is to improve the communication of scientific and engineering developments in the field of medical imaging. This journal can offer a solution to the problems of long delays between acceptance of a paper and its publication, the inferior quality of image reproduction, and the lack of color and dynamic cine displays. The specific goals and format of the journal are set down in the White Paper for a Journal of Medical Imaging on the WWW, but this document is by no means the final specifications. The Journal is evolving and your suggestions are encouraged.

The purpose of this document is to demonstrate a few example papers to those of you who are interested in creating papers for the first "issue" of the journal. Also, I would like this document to be the starting point for the "Mosaic/HTML Orientation" and "Instructions for Authors." Therefore, some useful hints about using Mosaic and creating HTML documents are given in Section 1.1; but I encourage those of you with Mosaic/HTML experience to add information to this list.

1.0 Utilities

The following basic utilities are needed to access articles and data in the journal. A set of binaries for Sun and SGI computers are available as tar files via ftp. To get one of these, turn on the Load To Local Disk toggle in the Options menu and then click here. Once the tar file is on your local disk, turn off the Load To Local Disk toggle and read these instructions. The individual utilities are the following:

• The client application NCSA Mosaic, which you must already have, if you are reading this document. There is extensive documentation available through the links from the Home Page of Mosaic. Reading the demo documents and others is the best way to learn about the abilities and limitations of Mosaic. (At peak times, it is difficult to get to Mosaic's home page at www.ncsa.uiuc.edu, due to its overwhelming popularity. You can download a local copy.)
• The public domain image viewer xv.
• The public domain movie viewer mpeg_play.
• If you want to hear the aural commentary, you need a sound player such as "showaudio". However, audio is an incredibly inefficient way to use up network bandwidth at this time.
• For reading the PostScript versions of papers, you need a PostScript viewer.

1.1 Useful Information about Mosaic and HTML

Although relatively comprehensive user manuals are available for both Mosaic and HTML (HyperText Markup Language), for those of you new to Mosaic, there are two functions that are particularly useful for beginning users:

• The function "View Source" under the File menu is useful for learning HTML and the ways of Mosaic. When you see something you like, you can view the HTML file that generated it in a separate window. If you try it right now, you will see how the title, images, and italics were included at the top of this document.
• The "Hotlist..." function under the Navigation menu is the best way to avoid losing a critical document in "Web space." When you have found a document that you know you will need again, jump up to Navigate and "Add Current To Hotlist". It is then just a double mouse click away at any time that you choose Hotlist....

Example Papers

• Cardiac Tagging with Breath-hold CINE MRI E.R. McVeigh and E. Atalar, originally published in Magn. Reson. Med. 28:318-327 (1992).
• Visualization and Analysis of Functional Cardiac MRI Data E.R. McVeigh, M.A. Guttman et. al., to be published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 2168 (1994), ISBN 0-8194-1463-8.

Problems for Discussion

Elliot McVeigh, January 1994.