Visualizing the structure and the evolving of digital medicine: a scientometrics review

This article aims to analyze and visualize the structure and the emerging trend of digital medicine, a new medical pattern of twenty-first century. Our study objectively explores the document co-citation clusters of 6060 bibliographic records to identify the origin of digital medicine and the hot research specialty of domain. Pivotal point articles, prominent authors, active disciplines and institution have been identified by network analysis theory. CiteSpace was used to visualize the perspective of digital medicine domain. As an interdiscipline which integrated computer science, information engineering with medicine, digital medicine originally and mainly on digital medical imaging technology research for accuracy and speedy clinical diagnosis and therapy. Of 6060 relevant records reviewed, 1719 (28 %) are on radiology, 902 (15 %) are on engineering, 539 (9 %) are on computer science. The largest co-citation cluster is on digital tomosynthesis. The earliest cluster is on medical imaging segmentation and registration. Post-processing imaging technology, detector, phase contrast, reversible watermarking, input, model 3D reconstruct, real-time dynamic imaging, dosimetry have been the hot research topics. The recently cluster is on internet health information. Harvard University of USA is the prominent institution. The coverage of digital medicine research is widely from clinic to laboratory. Recent year, domain research front is thematically on teleradiology, telemedicine and hospital information management system.