For this blog post, let’s dive into a database that’s probably a bit different than most you’re used to seeing: the Open Access Biomedical Image Search Engine, aka Open-i.  From the site FAQ comes the most succinct description:

“[The] Open-i service of the National Library of Medicine enables search and retrieval of abstracts and images (including charts, graphs, clinical images, etc.) from the open source literature, and biomedical image collections. Searching may be done using text queries as well as query images. Open-i provides access to over 3.7 million images from about 1.2 million PubMed Central® articles; 7,470 chest x-rays with 3,955 radiology reports; 67,517 images from NLM History of Medicine collection; and 2,064 orthopedic illustrations.”

The home page interface is anchored by a basic search box.  However, to get the most out of the database, users should navigate to the FAQ page.  On this page, the search field is augmented by dropdown menus just below it.  The dropdown menus allow users to limit searches by article type, image type, subsets of publication type, pre-defined collections, licensing, medical specialty, and location of keywords in records.  The Rank By menu at the left allows users to limit results in a variety of ways.

Of additional interest is the search by image feature.  This feature allows a user to upload an image and have the database return similar images, much like Google’s search by image service.  To use it, simply click the camera to the right of the search field and upload an image you’d like to find similar images of.

The results list will display thumbnail images and bibliographic information regarding the resource the image appears in.  Depending on the type of resource the image appears in, hovering your mouse curser over a particular image thumbnail may display a Bottom Line entry, highlighted grey.  These “Bottom Line” entries are automatically generated summaries of the articles that are “most likely to discuss patient-oriented outcomes of the methods presented in the paper” (Dina Demner-Fushman et al., p. 173).  So, it nicely gives you some context for the image without the need to click.

In case you search Open-i and don't find what you're looking for, Dykes Library has alternatives available.  AccessMedicine's Diagnostic and Imaging Studies, and ClinicalKey Multimedia are browseable and searchable collections of images and other non-text based resources.  As always, if you experience any issues using these databases, please contact us.  We're happy to help.

So there’s a very brief rundown of Open-i and its commercial alternatives.  I hope you find it to be a bit of of an eye-opener. 🙄