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© RSNA, 2008

Developing a Sensitive Search Strategy in MEDLINE to Retrieve Studies on Assessment of the Diagnostic Performance of Imaging Techniques

Appendix E1

Glossary

Boolean logic

The logic used to link terms described in the concepts of the search strategy. The operators AND, OR, and NOT are used to refine the search strategy.

Derivation reference standard

A set of records that is different from and independent of the VRS and are used to develop the search strategy.

Derivation set

All MEDLINE indexed articles in key journals used to select the diagnostic imaging studies for the DRS.

Hits

A popular term referring to the total number of records retrieved by search terms in any database interface.

MEDLINE

An electronic database produced by the U.S. National Library o

Medical Subject Headings (MeSH)

Terms used by the National Library of Medicine to index articles in Index Medicus and MEDLINE. The MeSH system has a tree structure in which broad subject terms branch into a series of progressively narrower subject terms.

OVID

The OVID gateway (OVID Technologies, New York, NY) provides a selection of bibliographic databases available by subscription.

Reference standard

A method, procedure. or measurement commonly considered to be the best available.

Retrieval statistics

Sensitivity

The proportion of records retrieved from the reference standard sets of articles (DRS or VRS) by the search term or search strategy.

Specificity

The proportion of irrelevant records (non-reference standard) not retrieved from the derivation or validation sets of articles by the search term or search strategy.

Positive predictive value

The proportion of records retrieved by the search term or search strategy that meet the reference standard criteria (DRS or VRS).

Search strategy or filter

A series of search terms that are combined by using Boolean operators to retrieve the records of relevance to the topic. The term filter is also used for strategies designed for applied use.

Search terms

Terms entered in the command line of a search engine. These may be keywords that form part of a controlled vocabulary or thesaurus such as MeSH, or free text words.

Total cites

The total number of times that each journal has been cited in a given year. Total cites compares journals rather than articles cited, which is used for impact factors. These are reported in ISI Journal Citation Reports at http://admin-apps.isiknowledge.com/JCR/JCR?SID=1BK8f2Ibdgg1MmKFfCm (may be accessible only to Athens registered users).

Validation reference standard

A set of records that is different from and independent of the DRS and are used to validate the search strategy.

Validation set

All MEDLINE indexed articles in the key journals used to select the diagnostic imaging studies for the VRS.

Terms used in MEDLINE (OVID format)

Subject heading

See MeSH

Explode function

Represented as exp (eg, "exp "diagnostic imaging"/". It also retrieves the narrower terms within the subject heading tree (eg "radiography/", "ultrasonography/").

Subheadings

Qualifiers added to MeSH subject headings to further refine the context of the term. For example, in an article on the diagnosis of a head and neck neoplasm with ultrasonography, the MeSH term "Head and Neck Neoplasms" may be qualified with the subheading "ultrasonography," which is abbreviated as "us". In a search strategy this would be represented as "Head and Neck Neoplasms/us".

Floating subheading

A floating subheading (eg, "us.fs") would retrieve all the MeSH terms qualified with the "us" subheading.

Restrict to focus (*)

MeSH terms may be restricted to those for which the subject heading is indexed as the main focus of the article. This is performed by prefixing the MeSH term with an asterisk (eg, "exp *diagnostic imaging/").

Text words

These are free text terms found in the titles and abstracts of MEDLINE records (eg, "sensitivity.tw").

Truncation ($ symbol in OVID systems)

Truncates the suffix of a text word so that all synonyms of the word in titles and abstracts are retrieved (eg, "identif$" retrieves identify, identification, identifying).

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