Analysis of the altmetric top 100 articles with the highest altmetric attention scores in medical imaging journals

Purpose Alternative metrics (altmetrics) provides a complementary measure of the impact of scientific articles. The aim of this study was to identify and characterize the top 100 articles with the highest Altmetric attention score (AAS) in medical imaging journals. Materials and methods We searched for AASs articles published in 116 journals in the subject category “Radiology, Nuclear Medicine and Medical Imaging” using the Web of Science. We determined the top 100 articles with the highest AAS using the Altmetric.com database, and then analyzed them with regard to the publishing journal, year, country of origin, type of article, subspecialty, main topic, and imaging technique. Results The top 100 articles were published in 18 imaging journals, led by Radiology (47%). These articles were published from 2016 to 2018 (94%). Most of the articles were from the United States (62%) and were original clinical studies (59%). The most common subspecialties and imaging technique of study were neuroimaging (30%) and MRI (35%). The main topics of articles were brain disease and function (30%). Conclusion Our study presents a detailed list and analysis of the top 100 articles with the highest AAS in imaging literature, which provides unique characteristics representing the public’s attention in this field.