Making MIRC™ Work
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RSNA News continues to profile real-world users of RSNA's Medical Imaging Resource Center (MIRC™). Mary Wyers, M.D., attending radiologist in the Department of Medical Imaging at Children's Memorial Hospital and assistant professor of radiology at Northwestern University in Chicago, started using MIRC "out of the box" and has involved her residents in creating MIRC-hosted teaching files for nearly four years.
In spring 2004, Dr. Wyers and her colleagues began sorting through old film-based teaching files and hired first-year medical students to take digital photographs of the films. With these and newer digital images, students, residents and research assistants worked under Dr. Wyers' direction to create teaching files on the hospital intranet using RSNA's early authoring tool MIRCat. Children's Memorial now hosts 1,519 cases on MIRC.
 Mary Wyers, M.D. |
"We require each of our residents to create one teaching file case per month," said Dr. Wyers. "We have residents rotating in pediatric radiology from about six different Chicago programs. We have many, many authors."
MIRC helps to organize files for a variety of educational purposes, such as review cases for residents studying for board exams and "classic" educational modules within the pediatric radiology curriculum.
"The idea is to standardize their experience," said Dr. Wyers. "All residents see a Wilms tumor, epiglottis and other classic pediatric radiology cases, as well as the more unusual ones, such as skeletal dysplasias, which may not come up frequently in regular clinical work."
Authors select images from their PACS and upload them as JPEG files to MIRC. Residents create teaching files under the supervision of attending radiologists. Most require very little training. "Most of them are computer savvy and have no problems using the author service," said Dr. Wyers.
The department still uses the computer they initially purchased to host their teaching files. In addition, they now have a separate server hosting MIRC files online, accessible to the public at mirc.childrensmemorial.org.
"MIRC is free, it's easy, and it's continually being upgraded and improved," Dr. Wyers said. She said she looks forward to the development of a tool that selects a random or themed group of cases for teaching conferences and the ability to crop uploaded images to facilitate removing patient names.
Exceptional computer skills are not required to use MIRC, Dr. Wyers emphasized. "I am actually a good example of somebody who uses MIRC only as a radiologist," she said. "I am not a computer programmer and don't have the knowledge to change code." RSNA consultants helped with minor customizations like adding a Children's Memorial graphic, she said.
Most important, said Dr. Wyers, is dedication to the program's success. "It takes commitment from an individual to be the administrator for the site—to implement changes, manage upgrades, and drive other people to use the program," she said.
For more information about MIRC, go to RSNA.org/MIRC/index.cfm or choose MIRC from the Technology dropdown menu at the top of the RSNA.org home page.
