Interactive Atlas of

Oral & Maxillofacial Pathology

CD-ROM

Reviews & Comments

Review from Journal of Dental Education

Nov. 1999 Issue

 Reviewed by:

Valerie A. Murrah, D.M.D., M.S.,

Professor and Chair Department

Of diagnostic Sciences and General Dentistry

University of North Carolina School of Dentistry

Chapel Hill, North Carolina

 The Interactive Atlas of Oral and Maxillofacial Pathology is a comprehensive atlas of all major disease entities found in the oral cavity.  It provides clinical, radiographic, and histopathologic images to illustrate each disease condition.  In addition, it provides text material concerning the etiology, clinical and radiographic findings, histopathology, and the treatment and prognosis for the conditions.  The system requires a Windows 95 Operating System or higher, a Pentium machine with 16MB RAM, an SVGA monitor with thousands of colors, and a double-speed CD-ROM or higher. 

The atlas is divided into seventeen disease categories, which may be accessed from the main menu.  In addition, an alphabetical menu of conditions may be accessed from any of the seventeen categories.  Each disease entity is accompanied by an image list that indicates the type and number of images accessible to the user.  Two nice features of the program are the "album view," which allows the viewer to look at all images at one, and the "search function," which allows the user to search for other diseases that may be related, by using key words.  The user may then immediately access information from the atlas on these related diseases by clicking on the words.  Photographs, for the most part, are quite excellent and can be enlarged by the viewer.  The "index card" approach to providing text to accompany the clinical photos is pleasing and easy to use.  A "custom notes" function, accessed by an icon on the toolbar, allows one to personalize one's disk by making personal comments or references.  This is an ideal function for allowing a student to transpose notes from a given class lecture into the atlas program. 

The atlas is well formatted and easy to read.  Images load quickly and are excellent examples of the disease entities.  The only feature that I would like to see added is a backward/forward function.  It appears that one must return to the main menu to access the next disease in a sequence of diseases, rather than simply moving forward in the sequence that one has originally selected.  Also, if one selects "file" and clicks on "exit ' " one will exit the entire program instead of just the particular disease entity that is being reviewed.  It is necessary to go under "topics" and select "main menu" to go back to where one has been before.  This may be confusing to some users.

 The differential diagnosis feature is useful and interesting.  It separates lesions into categories and then questions the user about the characteristics of the lesion in order to offer a differential diagnosis.  This feature will be greatly appreciated by students studying for exams.  When I originally accessed this area, however, I thought that I would be obtaining a differential diagnosis for the lesion that I was viewing at the time.  This would be a nice feature to be able to directly access from a given disease entity It would also be nice to be able to access photographs from the differential diagnosis list.

My favorite feature was the "disease comparison" feature on the tool bar, which allows one to access the images and text for two different diseases to compare and contrast them.  This is an outstanding teaching aid for students trying to differentiate between two diseases that have similar features.

On the whole, the atlas is an extremely useful tool that would be invaluable in any oral pathology course.  The on-screen images have more "life" to them than the usual images in books.  The text is concise and, therefore, excellent for a quick review.  The "custom notes" feature allows users to individualize the CD.  The ability to print out information from the program is also a tremendous benefit.

 I highly recommend this comprehensive and well-illustrated interactive atlas as an adjunct to the required text for any oral pathology course.  The authors are to be applauded for their visually stimulating and user-friendly creation.  This CD will certainly encourage any student to want to learn more about oral and maxillofacial pathology.  It will also provide current practitioners with a ready reference to assist them with the management of oral diseases in their daily practices.   

" The strength of this award-winning software lies in its clinically oriented material and high quality color images of oral and maxillofacial disease. The authors have done an outstanding job in presenting their information clearly and concisely. "

Dr. John Giunta

Professor of Oral Pathology and Previous Chair

Tufts University School of Dental Medicine

 " A dynamic, thoughtful and clinician friendly software that stimulates learning and understanding of oral and maxillofacial pathology: an invaluable resource for clinicians, students and educators"

Dr. Greg Panossian

Oral & Maxillofacial Surgery

Long Island, New York