Cases

Last revised by Frank Gaillard on 24 Oct 2024

Cases form your personal library and are shared with the greater Radiopaedia community. Our editorial board will select awesome cases to be featured on the Radiopaedia homepage (see previously featured cases) and promoted on our various social media channels.

The Featured Case Committee chooses one case from the preceding month as the Case of the Month.

Many of you may wonder which cases will make the most significant contribution to global radiology education and whether a case needs to be of a rare condition to be worthy.

The simple answer is "any case is reasonable" provided:

  • the diagnosis has been established with near certainty

    • Certain or Almost certain diagnostic certainty is needed for most new contributions

    • we are slowly phasing out Possible cases (c. 2023)

  • good-quality imaging that illustrates important diagnostic features

    • technically good quality images (see image preparation)

    • exported without text overlays

If you are inexperienced, ask your local radiologists for suggestions. People will remember you for the quality of your cases! And don't forget, you can also keep personal cases that don’t meet the case publishing guidelines in your own unlisted case library.

It is essential that patients cannot be identified from the images and accompanying text. For more information, see the patient confidentiality section of our Terms of Use

That means no patient identifiers should be included (e.g. name, date of birth, address, etc.) but it also means that particularly rare conditions can be problematic given that they are linked to your account, which geographically narrows their origin.

Similarly, if you work in a small community, de-identification may not be sufficient to prevent identification.

In such cases, you should consider whether to upload the case at all or obtain written informed consent. See patient confidentiality for more information.

The "Collector" achievement on your profile page reflects the number of public cases that you have published and that have been approved during the moderation process. 

The best way to get to know the ins and outs of uploading cases is to go through our learning pathway: 

Depending on your situation, you may be able to use one of our uploaders.  Alternatively, you can do everything you need through your browser. 

Currently, there are three types of cases:

  1. Draft cases are there for you to work on, prior to 'publishing them'. All users have access to 10 draft cases at any time. Read more about draft cases.

  2. Public cases are by far the most common. They are visible to all users and can be used in playlists and articles. There is no limit whatsoever to the number of public cases each user can have. Read more about public cases.

  3. Unlisted cases are there for you to use in special circumstances. They are not visible to other users, but you can still share them easily with others. All users have access to 10 unlisted cases at any time. Read more about unlisted cases.

Anyone can download individual images from cases; just use the little cloud icon over the top left corner of the main case view.  

Additionally, there are two ways you can download entire cases: zip of the original files and offline presentation mode. 

Firstly, all users can download their own cases as a zip that contains images nicely arranged in folders as well as a file with all the text of the case. This is not available for other contributor's cases as this is intended as a way to download your cases as a personal backup.

This is available as "Download originals" from the little cog drop down to the right of the case. 

Secondly, Curie (Radium) Supporters can also download any contributor's public cases and public playlists as playable presentation-mode files for use offline without any of the pesky ads or annoying delays while the images load. This is intended to facilitate teaching.

NB These files contain all the images but not in a human-friendly format/organization. 

This is available as "Download case" also from the little cog drop down to the right of the case.

We do not claim ownership of the images you upload (see terms of use); you make them available for use by others under the Creative Commons NC-BY-SA license.

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