Using aggregate taxonomies to summarize SNOMED CT evolution

Christopher Ochs, Yehoshua Perl, James Geller, Mark Musen

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

7 Scopus citations

Abstract

Terminologies are typically large and complex knowledge systems. It is difficult to obtain an orientation into their structure and content. In previous research we designed compact summary networks called partial-area taxonomies to provide a structural summary of a terminology. The sizes of a terminology and of its partial-area taxonomy are defined as their numbers of nodes. While a partial-area taxonomy is typically smaller than the original terminology, it is often not compact enough to provide a clear "big picture," due to too many nodes that summarize only a small number of terminology concepts. The display of such a partial-area taxonomy is still overwhelming. In this paper, we introduce a more compact summary of a terminology, called an aggregate taxonomy, obtained by aggregating small partial-area taxonomy nodes into larger nodes. We present a parametrized technique to study the design of such an aggregate taxonomy and apply it to the Specimen hierarchy of SNOMED CT. A software tool for creating and displaying aggregate taxonomies is described. We illustrate how aggregate taxonomies derived across multiple SNOMED CT releases can be used to summarize the evolution of the Specimen hierarchy's content over eight years of SNOMED CT releases.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Title of host publicationProceedings - 2015 IEEE International Conference on Bioinformatics and Biomedicine, BIBM 2015
Editorslng. Matthieu Schapranow, Jiayu Zhou, Xiaohua Tony Hu, Bin Ma, Sanguthevar Rajasekaran, Satoru Miyano, Illhoi Yoo, Brian Pierce, Amarda Shehu, Vijay K. Gombar, Brian Chen, Vinay Pai, Jun Huan
PublisherInstitute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc.
Pages1008-1015
Number of pages8
ISBN (Electronic)9781467367981
DOIs
StatePublished - Dec 16 2015
EventIEEE International Conference on Bioinformatics and Biomedicine, BIBM 2015 - Washington, United States
Duration: Nov 9 2015Nov 12 2015

Publication series

NameProceedings - 2015 IEEE International Conference on Bioinformatics and Biomedicine, BIBM 2015

Other

OtherIEEE International Conference on Bioinformatics and Biomedicine, BIBM 2015
Country/TerritoryUnited States
CityWashington
Period11/9/1511/12/15

All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

  • Software
  • Artificial Intelligence
  • Health Informatics
  • Biomedical Engineering

Keywords

  • Abstraction Network
  • Medical Terminology and Ontology
  • SNOMED CT
  • Summarization
  • Taxonomy
  • Terminology Abstraction
  • Visualization

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