Auditing the assignments of top-level semantic types in the UMLS semantic network to UMLS concepts

Zhe He, Yehoshua Perl, Gai Elhanan, Yan Chen, James Geller, Jiang Bian

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contribution

7 Scopus citations

Abstract

The Unified Medical Language System (UMLS) is an important terminological system. By the policy of its curators, each concept of the UMLS should be assigned the most specific Semantic Types (STs) in the UMLS Semantic Network (SN). Hence, the Semantic Types of most UMLS concepts are assigned at or near the bottom (leaves) of the UMLS Semantic Network. While most ST assignments are correct, some errors do occur. Therefore, Quality Assurance efforts of UMLS curators for ST assignments should concentrate on automatically detected sets of UMLS concepts with higher error rates than random sets. In this paper, we investigate the assignments of top-level semantic types in the UMLS semantic network to concepts, identify potential erroneous assignments, define four categories of errors, and thus provide assistance to curators of the UMLS to avoid these assignments errors. Human experts analyzed samples of concepts assigned 10 of the top-level semantic types and categorized the erroneous ST assignments into these four logical categories. Two thirds of the concepts assigned these 10 top-level semantic types are erroneous. Our results demonstrate that reviewing top-level semantic type assignments to concepts provides an effective way for UMLS quality assurance, comparing to reviewing a random selection of semantic type assignments.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Title of host publicationProceedings - 2017 IEEE International Conference on Bioinformatics and Biomedicine, BIBM 2017
EditorsIllhoi Yoo, Jane Huiru Zheng, Yang Gong, Xiaohua Tony Hu, Chi-Ren Shyu, Yana Bromberg, Jean Gao, Dmitry Korkin
PublisherInstitute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc.
Pages1262-1269
Number of pages8
ISBN (Electronic)9781509030491
DOIs
StatePublished - Dec 15 2017
Event2017 IEEE International Conference on Bioinformatics and Biomedicine, BIBM 2017 - Kansas City, United States
Duration: Nov 13 2017Nov 16 2017

Publication series

NameProceedings - 2017 IEEE International Conference on Bioinformatics and Biomedicine, BIBM 2017
Volume2017-January

Other

Other2017 IEEE International Conference on Bioinformatics and Biomedicine, BIBM 2017
Country/TerritoryUnited States
CityKansas City
Period11/13/1711/16/17

All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

  • Biomedical Engineering
  • Health Informatics

Keywords

  • Controlled Vocabulary
  • Quality Assurance
  • Semantic Network
  • Semantic Type

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