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SUMMARY: The purpose of this research was to enable anyone to learn the sectional anatomy of the head anywhere, anytime by presenting software to browse sectioned images on a Google Android mobile device. Among the 2,343 sectioned images at 0.1 mm intervals, 234 sectioned images at 1 mm intervals were chosen. The corresponding 234 segmented images containing 236 head structures were selected. The software of the mobile version was programmed and debugged in the Java programming language. The folders of the sectioned images and segmented images and the txt file of the segmentation data were arranged in the source code of the software. The software was distributed free of charge at the homepage (neuroanatomy.kr) and Google Play Store. After installing the software, the sectioned images and corresponding segmented images could be browsed by touching and swiping the screen. In the medical category of the Google Play Store, the software earned a good reputation. The software of the Android mobile version was usable regardless of the time and place. The software is under the authors’ non-commercial policy. Other investigators may modify the mobile software to browse their own images. The mobile version of the software will aid medical students and doctors in learning sectional anatomy.

KISTI is carrying out an e-Spine project for spinal diseases to prepare for the aged society, so-called NAP. The purpose of the study is to build a spine ontology that represents the anatomical structure and disease information which is compatible with simulation model of KISTI. The final use of the ontology includes diagnosis of diseases and setting treatment directions by the clinicians. The ontology was represented using 3D software. Twenty diseases were selected to be represented after discussions with a spine specialist. Several ontology studies were reviewed, reference books were selected for each disease and were organized in MS Excel. All the contents were then reviewed by the specialists. Altova SemanticWorks and Protégé were used to code spine ontology with OWL Full model. Links to the images from KISTI and sample images of diseases were included in the ontology. The OWL ontology was also reviewed by the specialists again with Protégé. We represented unidirectional ontology from anatomical structure to disease, images, and treatment. The ontology was human understandable. It would be useful for the education of medical students or residents studying diseases of spine. But in order for the computer to understand the ontology, a new model with OWL DL or Lite is needed.

Many people are interested in medical information because they want to take care of their health by themselves. Thus, some institutions provide medical term search services to help their understanding about difficult medical terms. However, those services are suffered from the low quality of search results because simple keyword search technologies are applied to medical term databases and Web sites. To prevent unnecessary spinal surgery and to support scientific diagnosis of spinal diseases and systematic prediction of treatment effects, we have been developing e-spine, which is a computerized simulation model of human spines. In this paper, as a background data for realizing e-spine, we have collected spine data from 77 cadavers and 298 patients with normal spine or degenerative spinal diseases. The spine data consists of 2D images such as CT, MRI, or X-ray, 3D shapes, geometry data and property data. Especially, we propose our database and the bioinformatics linked data based spine information retrieval service that provides more user-friendly services and very precise results. To provide abundant medical knowledge, our service provides search results of MeSH, OMIM, UniProt, GeneOntology and DBpedia. Also, the search results of PubMed are displayed to provide the related papers and books. As a result, our database will offer great value and utility in the diagnosis, treatment, and rehabilitation of patients suffering from spinal diseases.

KISTI is carrying out an e-Spine project for spinal diseases to prepare for the aged society, so called NAP.