BLUSNO: A system for orientation, visualization, and quality assurance of SNOMED CT using abstraction networks

Biomedical ontologies are generally very large and complex. Their size and complexity make quality assurance a difficult and timeconsuming task. Compact networks called abstraction networks can be derived to summarize the content and structure of ontologies and support their quality assurance. The Biomedical Layout Utility for SNOMED CT (BLUSNO) is a system for automatically deriving and visualizing area and partial-area taxonomies, a dual-level abstraction network, for SNOMED CT. BLUSNO includes an interactive, dynamic environment for exploring taxonomies, a concept-centric browser, and other utilities for reviewing the taxonomies derived for SNOMED CT. BLUSNO is intended to serve as the starting point for a more generic system that will be used to create and visualize different kinds of abstraction networks for other ontologies.