Abstract: A system and method provides for enabling on-line transactional services among sellers and buyers having no previous relationship with each other. The system includes a financial clearinghouse for receiving a request for goods or services from a buyer and making a real-time determination of a risk classification of the buyer utilizing an on-line repository of credit information. The financial clearinghouse determines a risk-based discount fee as a function of the buyer's risk classification in order to establish a payment amount to the seller from the clearinghouse. If the transaction is authorized by the financial clearinghouse, the financial clearinghouse transmits the payment amount to the seller and transmits an invoice to the buyer for the purchase price of the transaction. The system can also include a broker coupled to the financial clearinghouse for providing an on-line order acceptance and processing capability between the buyers and sellers.

Abstract: A transportable medical image storage medium includes a recordable optical compact disk. The compact disk has a first storage area which records a plurality of substantially losslessly compressed digital medical images and a second storage area which records a plurality of lossy compressed digital medical images corresponding to said losslessly compressed medical images. Where a case study or set of medical images is of such a length that more than one CD is required to record all of the losslessly compressed digital medical images, each CD records the entire set of lossy compressed digital medical images.

Abstract: The electronic dictionary disclosed herein is organized for expeditious search based on partial spelling by assigning words to blocks having a predetermined maximum size, the blocks being represented by respective partial spelling sequencer. The words are assigned to blocks by progressing through successive possible sequences in order and, for each sequence, determining the number of words in the set of words corresponding to that sequence. If the number of words is less than the maximum, all of the words in the set are assigned to a corresponding terminal block. Otherwise words up to a preselected number are assigned to a non-terminal block and the partial spelling sequence is extended. As a result of the organization only one call to the dictionary needs to be made for each extension of the sequence.