BeMeVIS – Evaluation of retrieval systems and medical reference databases
Currently we have a clear lack of image databases available free of charge for evaluation purposes that include ground truth (or a gold standard). To really evaluate the performance of retrieval systems such databases and gold standards need to be created at several scales, for varied (PACS-like) databases where the goal needs to be to find visually similar images and specialized databases such as those containing lung high-resolution lung CTs, where the goal can be a diagnostic aid. Some of the available databases on the internet include the database of the Casimage project containing more than 8200 images free of copyright. This databases is in the accessible in the MIRC standard that offers some more free radiological resources. The European Federation for Medical Informatics has also founded an iniative to create a Reference Image Database. The National Library of medicine (NLM) offers access to some images such as those of the visible human project.