A new radiology learning tool was just released in the App Store, the iRadiology App. This app has a catalog of over 500 radiology cases designed to help medical students and residents improve their plain film,CT, and MRI reading skills. The cases are derived from Dr. Gillian Lieberman, who is the currently Director of Harvard Medical Student training and Associate Director of the Residency Program at Beth Israel Medical Center. This legitimizes the content of the application. In this review we’ll discuss the application further and also show you how to turn on the “Zoom” feature built into the iPhone that will enable you to improve the utility of this medical app.
When you open up this application you are presented with the above screen. With the search feature, you can search for various cases based on certain key words, such as cardiovascular, chest, or actual pathologies. I didn’t find the Search function to be very helpful, but the topics section was great for navigating with the application.
Activating the “Zoom” feature on your iPhone:
Before writing about this application further, I’ll quickly show you how to turn on the native “Zoom” function of your iPhone. While this app allows you to zoom into pictures, you can’t zoom in as close as you’d like sometimes, but when you turn on the native “Zoom” function in your iPhone, you can get significantly closer, making these images even more useful.
Go to Settings, tap General, then Accessibility. Once you tapped on Accessibility, tap Zoom, and slide the Zoom feature to the On position. The instructions for how to use the extra Zoom feature are shown on the same page. Make sure you know how to manipulate the “To change zoom” portion correctly. Below is an example:
This feature will also be useful for other medical applications that require you to read detailed images. Now back to iRadiology. For the purpose of this review, I’ll select “Chest” from the Topics section, and then in the subcategory I’ll select Lungs.
Within the Lungs section there are further subcategories, showing the great diversity of cases this application possess. I’ll select Sarcoidosis and go from there.
When you tap on Labels, you are presented with the above picture, revealing key areas of the image. 
If you have the Zoom feature turned on, as explained at the beginning, you can zoom in ridiculously close and get a better picture of these films. I wasn’t able to include the pictures where I used the “Zoom” feature because the iPhone doesn’t take screen shots of these pictures.
When you tap on Findings, you are presented with further information about the radiology case at hand, in this case, sarcoidosis. I found this section to include a great deal of high yield information that is often asked on the USMLE step 1 and step 2 exams.
What I liked:
- Great wealth of knowledge, over 500 radiology cases
- Labels section does a great job of showing the pathology of interest
- Great diversity in the cases present
- Legitimate source for the pictures and cases provided in the application
- Great explanations of the radiology pathology presented in the application
- It’s FREE
What I didn’t like so much:
- Zoom feature, using the traditional pinch motion, could be more robust, although the iPhone’s new native “Zoom” feature can be used
- Supports landscape mode, but the Findings section can only be viewed in vertical screen.
What I’d like to see in future updates:
- Quiz Mode
- Bookmarking of favorite cases to review
- Built in link to Wikipedia for more information about the radiologic case at hand
Conclusion:
We’ve reviewed other radiology related applications before, such as iAnatomy, and the Joslin Chest Atlas. iAnatomy did a great job of providing cross sectional CT images for anatomy learning, but did not provide pictures of various disease pathologies. Joslin’s Chest Atlas provided some great plain chest film images, but the amount of content is limited with less than 100 images. The beauty with iRadiology is in the huge amount of content provided, with over 500 radiology cases, and these cases are high yield as well. The majority of these cases are ones I’ve seen in the hospital or have learned about. Oh by the way, this app included plain film x-rays, CT scans, AND MRIs.
This application has the full package and I’d definitely recommend it to medical students, residents, or any other health care providers who want to improve their radiology reading skills. With the price tag of “free” this app is a no brainer to download.
[itunes]
[website]
This app is 137 mb, so make sure you’re connected to a dedicated WiFi connection when downloading.
Also, special thanks to one of our readers in Taiwan for alerting us of this application. Remember, many of our post ideas come from you, our readers.
