1. Health Education Assets Library (HEAL)
http://www.healcentral.org/
HEAL is a database of medical illustrations covering the specialties of Dermatology, Obstetrics and Gynaecology, Neuroanatomy, Neurology, Pathology, Biochemistry, and Cardiology. Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) are used to categorise the library of illustrations. Clinicians may upload their pictures so that they are available to other users. Registration which is free is required. Copyright restrictions may apply for some pictures. Users may select pictures while browsing and download their selections as a single zip file.
2. Public Health Image Library (PHIL)
http://phil.cdc.gov/phil/default.asp
Maintained by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), PHIL is the gateway where CDC's pictures can be retrieved with the use of keyword search. PHIL allows the use of their contents for teaching, presentation, and public health messages. The pictures are organised into categories of people, place, and science subjects. Files available include single images, image sets and multimedia files.
3. Bristol Biomedical Images Archive
http://www.brisbio.ac.uk/
This archive, maintained by the University of Bristol, consists of a collection of more than 20,000 categorised images. Medical images on different topics or conditions can be located by means of a search engine. Users can browse freely on the website, but registration (free) is needed before downloading is allowed. The website allows free use of the images from the archive for teaching and educational purposes.
4. Gallery of Medical Illustrations
http://www.ctisus.org/
This gallery contains a collection of medical illustrations on a variety of topics, intended for various purposes in medical education and presentation. High quality illustrations created by powerful computer tools are available. The illustrations are grouped into different systems for easy retrieval.
5. Hardin MD Medical and Disease Pictures
http://www.lib.uiowa.edu/hardin/md/pictures.html
The Hardin MD's directory has a dedicated section on medical images. Hundreds of links to different websites with medical illustrations are available, and the selection of pictures are classified according to "Disease Pictures" and "Medical Pictures". Whether the medical illustrations are allowed for teaching or other purposes depends on the policy of respective websites.
6. Medical Illustration Source Book
http://www.medillsb.com/
This website contains medical illustrations and photography from professional artists of the Association of Medical Illustrators. Their work is collected in the Medical Illustration Source Book. Users can browse through the site for medical images of professional quality.
7. Health on the Net Media Gallery
http://wolfgang.hcuge.ch/Media/media.html
This media gallery, maintained by the Health on the Net Foundation, aims to encourage dissemination of ethical health information online. The media gallery is indexed by body systems, and includes images of medical diseases and procedures. Keyword search is also available for rapid location of medical images related to a medical condition.
Alfred KY Tang, MBBS (HK), MFM (Monash)
Family Physician in Private Practice
Correspondence to: Dr Alfred KY Tang, Shop 3A, 2/F, Hsin Kuang Shopping Centre,
Wong Tai Sin, Kowloon, Hong Kong SAR, China.
E-mail: alfredtang@hkma.org