Quality Assurance of Concept Roles in the National Cancer Institute thesaurus

Ling Zheng, Yan Chen, Yehoshua Perl, Michael Halper, James Geller, Sherri De Coronado

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

2 Scopus citations

Abstract

Ontologies are integral components of many health information processing environments. Hence, quality assurance (QA) of the conceptual content of any ontology is essential. A methodology for facilitating the identification and correction of a kind of error called 'missing-role error' for ontology concepts is presented. Specifically, being a member of the 'null-role set' is used as an indicator that missing-role errors are likely. Our QA methodology was applied to the Biological Process hierarchy, one of the hierarchies of the National Cancer Institute thesaurus (NCIt), a prominent ontology in the biomedical domain. Two hypotheses pertaining to the effectiveness of our QA approach were investigated. Many missing-role errors were discovered and confirmed in our analysis. In comparison to a control sample, our QA approach yielded a statistically significant number of concepts with missing-role errors, confirming our two hypotheses. QA is a critical part of an ontology's life-cycle, and automated or semi-automated tools for supporting this process are invaluable. The presented approach is a useful addition to the arsenal of tools available to QA personnel.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Title of host publicationProceedings - 2018 IEEE International Conference on Bioinformatics and Biomedicine, BIBM 2018
EditorsHarald Schmidt, David Griol, Haiying Wang, Jan Baumbach, Huiru Zheng, Zoraida Callejas, Xiaohua Hu, Julie Dickerson, Le Zhang
PublisherInstitute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc.
Pages2001-2008
Number of pages8
ISBN (Electronic)9781538654880
DOIs
StatePublished - Jan 21 2019
Event2018 IEEE International Conference on Bioinformatics and Biomedicine, BIBM 2018 - Madrid, Spain
Duration: Dec 3 2018Dec 6 2018

Publication series

NameProceedings - 2018 IEEE International Conference on Bioinformatics and Biomedicine, BIBM 2018

Conference

Conference2018 IEEE International Conference on Bioinformatics and Biomedicine, BIBM 2018
Country/TerritorySpain
CityMadrid
Period12/3/1812/6/18

All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

  • Biomedical Engineering
  • Health Informatics

Keywords

  • National Cancer Institute thesaurus
  • Ontology
  • Ontology Modeling
  • Quality Assurance
  • Role Error

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