The interactive image tool: adding structure to images.

The interactive image format and tool were developed by the Stanford University Medical Media and Information Technologies (SUMMIT) group to allow medical educators to add interactive annotations and outlines to medical cross-sections, gross dissections, and clinical images. The interactive image tool (IIT) format offers a general specification for adding structural information to images. The IIT format has been used to create rich databases of image/structure information which are employed in educational software created at SUMMIT. These databases consist of information which is re-usable in other applications as well as a standalone image database. Future extensions to the IIT format will provide a means to organize information based on the structure of that information rather than on the arbitrary or haphazard links of current hypertext and hypermedia information networks.