TY - JOUR
T1 - A tool for abstracting relevant classes of concepts
T2 - The common ancestry summarizer
AU - Tao, Ying
AU - Mendonça, Eneida A.
AU - Lussier, Yves A.
N1 - Funding Information:
The authors thank Jeeyae Choi, Pallav Sharda, Jianbo Lei and Sunmoc Yoon for their comments and evaluations. This work was conducted under the 528753/PO P417322 grant from NASA/UVC and the 02240011 grant from the Center for Advanced Technology (NYSTAR), Columbia University.
PY - 2004
Y1 - 2004
N2 - Controlled Medical Terminologies (CMTs) are indispensable tools for present medical information systems and medical informatics researches. Concept-oriented architecture and multiplehierarchy have been accepted as two of the desiderata of contemporary CMTs. A common problem for informaticians working with class-based methods for terminologies is to find the Most Relevant Common Ancestor (MRCA) for a group of concepts, the common ancestor which has the closest semantic distance to all the given concepts. However, manually exploring the hierarchical relationships and determining the MRCA are daunting tasks due to the massive size, the multiple hierarchies and in some case the cycles of the hierarchical networks of terminologies. In our study, we developed a web-based visualization tool, the Common Ancestry Summarizer (CAS), that graphically displays the hierarchical relations of multiple concepts within CMTs, and also assist users to identify the MRCA of these concepts by identifying the Lowest Common Ancestors (LCAs). The CAS has been shown useful in organizing classes for the controlled terms used in clinical guidelines (e.g. 'the bottom-up method').
AB - Controlled Medical Terminologies (CMTs) are indispensable tools for present medical information systems and medical informatics researches. Concept-oriented architecture and multiplehierarchy have been accepted as two of the desiderata of contemporary CMTs. A common problem for informaticians working with class-based methods for terminologies is to find the Most Relevant Common Ancestor (MRCA) for a group of concepts, the common ancestor which has the closest semantic distance to all the given concepts. However, manually exploring the hierarchical relationships and determining the MRCA are daunting tasks due to the massive size, the multiple hierarchies and in some case the cycles of the hierarchical networks of terminologies. In our study, we developed a web-based visualization tool, the Common Ancestry Summarizer (CAS), that graphically displays the hierarchical relations of multiple concepts within CMTs, and also assist users to identify the MRCA of these concepts by identifying the Lowest Common Ancestors (LCAs). The CAS has been shown useful in organizing classes for the controlled terms used in clinical guidelines (e.g. 'the bottom-up method').
KW - Common ancestors
KW - Controlled medical terminologies
KW - Multiple hierarchies
KW - Semantic network
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84887120110&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=84887120110&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.3233/978-1-60750-949-3-449
DO - 10.3233/978-1-60750-949-3-449
M3 - Article
C2 - 15360853
AN - SCOPUS:84887120110
SN - 0926-9630
VL - 107
SP - 449
EP - 453
JO - Studies in health technology and informatics
JF - Studies in health technology and informatics
ER -