Motivation: The MEDLINE database, consisting of over 19 million publication records, is the primary source of information for biomedicine and health questions. Although the database itself has been growing rapidly, the search paradigm of MEDLINE has remained largely unchanged.
Results: Here, we propose a new system for exploring the entire MEDLINE collection, represented by two unique features: (i) interactive: providing instant feedback to users' query letter by letter, and (ii) fuzzy: allowing approximate search. We develop novel index structures and search algorithms to make such a search model possible. We also develop incremental-update techniques to keep the data up to date.
Availability: Interactive and fuzzy searching algorithms for exploring MEDLINE are implemented in a system called iPubMed, freely accessible over the web at http://ipubmed.ics.uci.edu/ and http://tastier.cs.tsinghua.edu.cn/ipubmed.