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C Rosse

Publications and source records attributed to C Rosse.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed2003

Profile of on-line anatomy information resources: design and instructional implications.

This study is based on a review of 40 on-line anatomy web resources compiled from sites selected from our own searches as well as sites reviewed and published by an external group (Voiglio et al., 1999, Surg. Radiol. Anat. 21:65-68; Frasca et al., 2000, Surg. Radiol. Anat. 22:107-110). The purpose of our survey was to propose criteria by which anatomy educators could judge the characteristics of the currently available web-based resources for incorporation into the courses they teach. Each site was reviewed and scored based on a survey matrix that included four main categories: 1). site background information, 2). content components, 3). interactivity features, and 4). user interface design components. The average score of the reviewed sites was 3.3 of the total possible score of 10, indicating the limited use of computer-based design features by the majority of sites. We found, however, a number of programs in each of the survey categories that could serve as prototypes for designing future on-line anatomy resources. From the survey we conclude that various design features are less important than the comprehensiveness, depth, and logical organization of content. We suggest that the content should be sufficient for supporting explicitly defined educational objectives, which should target specific end-user populations. The majority of anatomy programs currently accessible on-line fall short of these requirements. There is a need for a coordinated and synergistic effort to generate a comprehensive anatomical information resource that is of sufficient quality and depth to support higher levels of learning beyond the memorization of structure names. Such a resource is a prerequisite for meaningful on-line anatomy education.

Anatomy↗
PubMed2002

Imaging and the Human Brain Project: a review.

OBJECTIVES: Survey current work primarily funded by the US Human Brain Project (HBP) that involves substantial use of images. Organize this work around a framework based on the physical organization of the body. METHODS: Pointers to individual research efforts were obtained through the HBP home page as well as personal contracts from HBP annual meetings. References from these sources were followed to find closely related work. The individual research efforts were then studied and characterized. RESULTS: The subject of the review is the intersection of neuroinformatics (information about the brain), imaging informatics (information about images), and structural informatics (information about the physical structure of the body). Of the 30 funded projects currently listed on the HBP web site, at least 22 make heavy use of images. These projects are described in terms of broad categories of structural imaging, functional imaging, and image-based brain information systems. CONCLUSIONS: Understanding the most complex entity known (the brain) gives rise to many interesting and difficult problems in informatics and computer science. Although much progress has been made by HBP and other neuroinformatics researchers, a great many problems remain that will require substantial informatics research efforts. Thus, the HPB can and should be seen as an excellent driving application area for biomedical informatics research.

Brain↗
PubMed2001

Terminologia anatomica: considered from the perspective of next-generation knowledge sources.

This report examines the semantic structure of Terminologia Anatomica, taking one page as an example. The focus of analysis is the meaning imparted to an anatomical term by virtue of its location within the structured list. Terminologia's structure, expressed through hierarchies of headings, varied typographical styles, indentations, and an alphanumeric code, implies specific relationships among the terms embedded in the list. Together, terms and relationships can potentially capture essential elements of anatomical knowledge. The analysis focuses on these knowledge elements and evaluates the consistency and logic in their representation. Most critical of these elements are class inclusion and part-whole relationships. Since these are implied, rather than explicitly modeled, by Terminologia, the use of the term list is limited to those who have some knowledge of anatomy; computer programs are excluded from navigating through the terminology. Assuring consistency in the explicit representation of anatomical relationships would facilitate adoption of Terminologia as the anatomical standard by the various controlled medical terminology (CMT) projects. These projects are motivated by the need to computerize the patient record, and their aim is to generate machine-understandable representations of biomedical concepts, including anatomy. Because of the lack of a consistent and explicit representation of anatomy, each of these CMTs has generated its own anatomy model. None of these models is compatible with any other, yet each is consistent with textbook descriptions of anatomy. The analysis of the semantic structure of Terminologia Anatomica leads to some suggestions for enhancing the term list in ways that would facilitate its adoption as the standard for anatomical knowledge representation in biomedical informatics.

Anatomy↗
PubMed2001

Enabling clinicians, researchers, and educators to build custom web-based biomedical information systems.

We describe an open-source toolkit that enables clinicians, researchers, and educators to build their own web-based biomedical information systems. The Web Interfacing Repository Manager (Wirm) is a high-level application server aimed at medical professionals, allowing them to create individually tailored systems for managing their multimedia data and knowledge. We provide an overview of the features of Wirm, explaining how they meet the requirements for supporting biomedical information management, and describe four applications that are currently being developed with Wirm: MyPACS, a teaching file authoring system for radiologists, Fathom, an experiment management system for natural language processing, the Digital Anatomist Repository, an image archiving tool for medical schools, and Ontolog, a browser for medical vocabularies.

Anatomy↗
PubMed2001

Foundational model of neuroanatomy: implications for the Human Brain Project.

In order to meet the need for a controlled terminology in neuroinformatics, we have integrated the extensive terminology of NeuroNames into the Foundational Model of anatomy. We illustrate the application of foundational principles for the establishment of an inheritance hierarchy, which accommodates anatomical attributes of neuroanatomical concepts and provides the foundation to which other information may be linked.

Brain↗
PubMed2001

The role of definitions in biomedical concept representation.

The Foundational Model (FM) of anatomy, developed as an anatomical enhancement of UMLS, classifies anatomical entities in a structural context. Explicit definitions have played a critical role in the establishment of FM classes. Essential structural properties that distinguish a group of anatomical entities serve as the differentiate for defining classes. These, as well as other structural attributes, are introduced as template slots in Protégé, a frame-based knowledge acquisition system, and are inherited by descendants of the class. A set of desiderata has evolved during the instantiation of the FM for formulating definitions. We contend that 1. these desiderata generalize to non-anatomical domains and 2. satisfying them in constituent vocabularies of UMLS would enhance the quality of information retrievable through UMLS.

Anatomy↗
PubMed1999

Anatomy atlases.

Anatomy atlases are unlike other knowledge sources in the health sciences in that they communicate knowledge through annotated images without the support of narrative text. An analysis of the knowledge component represented by images and the history of anatomy atlases suggest some distinctions that should be made between atlas and textbook illustrations. Textbook and atlas should synergistically promote the generation of a mental model of anatomy. The objective of such a model is to support anatomical reasoning and thereby replace memorization of anatomical facts. Criteria are suggested for selecting anatomy texts and atlases that complement one another, and the advantages and disadvantages of hard copy and computer-based anatomy atlases are considered.

Anatomy↗
PubMed1999

Influence of the Digital Anatomist Foundational Model on traditional representations of anatomical concepts.

A principled and logical representation of the structure of the human body has led to conflicts with traditional representations of the same knowledge by anatomy textbooks. The examples which illustrate resolution of these conflicts suggest that stricter requirements must be met for semantic consistency, expressivity and specificity by knowledge sources intended to support inference than by textbooks and term lists. These next-generation resources should influence traditional concept representation, rather than be constrained by convention.

Anatomy↗
PubMed1999

Conceptualization of anatomical spatial entities in the Digital Anatomist Foundational Model.

Anatomical spatial concepts are indispensable in educational and clinical discourse, yet a system for representing these concepts has not been proposed. Guided by explicit principles and definitions of the Digital Anatomist Foundational Model, we developed an ontology of spaces, surfaces, lines and points that are associated with anatomical structures. Ontologies for Anatomical Structure and Anatomical Spatial Entity were instantiated for the thorax, abdomen, pelvis and perineum. Representing the concepts in--part of--hierarchies as well, provided formative evaluation of the classification. We invite empirical evaluation of the Foundational Model through its use for educational and clinical applications.

Anatomy↗
PubMed1999

Anatomical information in radiation treatment planning.

We report on experience and insights gained from prototyping, for clinical radiation oncologists, a new access tool for the University of Washington Digital Anatomist information resources. This access tool is designed to integrate with a radiation therapy planning (RTP) system in use in a clinical setting. We hypothesize that the needs of practitioners in a clinical setting are different from the needs of students, the original targeted users of the Digital Anatomist system, but that a common knowledge resource can serve both. Our prototype was designed to help define those differences and study the feasibility of a full anatomic reference system that will support both clinical radiation therapy and all the existing educational applications.

Anatomy, Artistic↗
PubMed1999

Integration and visualization of multimodality brain data for language mapping.

A goal of the University of Washington Brain Project is to develop software tools for processing, integrating and visualizing multimodality language data obtained at the time of neurosurgery, both for surgical planning and for the study of language organization in the brain. Data from a single patient consist of four magnetic resonance-based image volumes, showing anatomy, veins, arteries and functional activation (fMRI). The data also include the location, on the exposed cortical surface, of sites that were electrically stimulated for the presence of language. These five sources are mapped to a common MR-based neuroanatomical model, then visualized to gain a qualitative appreciation of their relationships, prior to quantitative analysis. These procedures are described and illustrated, with emphasis on the visualization of fMRI activation, which may be deep in the brain, with respect to surface-based stimulation sites.

Anatomy, Cross-Sectional↗
PubMed1999

Design features of on-line anatomy information resources: a comparison with the Digital Anatomist.

In order to update the design of the next generation of the Digital Anatomist, we have surveyed teaching assistants who have used the Digital Anatomist for learning and teaching anatomy as medical students, and have also examined available anatomy web sites with sufficient content to support learning. The majority of web sites function in an atlas mode and provide for the identification of structures. These atlases incorporate a variety of features for interactivity with 2D images, some of which are not available in the Digital Anatomist. The surveys suggest that the greatest need is for on-line access to comprehensive and detailed anatomical information and for the development of knowledge-based methods that allow the direct manipulation of segmented 3D graphical models by the user. The requirement for such interactivity is a comprehensive symbolic model of the physical organization of the body that can support inference.

Anatomy↗
PubMed1999

Semi-automatic scene generation using the Digital Anatomist Foundational Model.

A recent survey shows that a major impediment to more widespread use of computers in anatomy education is the inability to directly manipulate 3-D models, and to relate these to corresponding textual information. In the University of Washington Digital Anatomist Project we have developed a prototype Web-based scene generation program that combines the symbolic Foundational Model of Anatomy with 3-D models. A Web user can browse the Foundational Model (FM), then click to request that a 3-D scene be created of an object and its parts or branches. The scene is rendered by a graphics server, and a snapshot is sent to the Web client. The user can then manipulate the scene, adding new structures, deleting structures, rotating the scene, zooming, and saving the scene as a VRML file. Applications such as this, when fully realized with fast rendering and more anatomical content, have the potential to significantly change the way computers are used in anatomy education.

Anatomy↗
PubMed1998

The digital anatomist structural abstraction: a scheme for the spatial description of anatomical entities.

In this paper, we propose a generalized scheme for the symbolic description of the spatial attributes of anatomical entities. The power of the scheme lies in the ability to model the spatial objects at the highest level of granularity: information can be obtained at the desired level of detail needed for a given application. This scheme uses the topological classes of point, line, surface, and volume to represent zero-D, one-D, two-D and three-D objects. A spatial object participates as a node in three complementary networks; the topology network, the part-of network, and the spatial associations network. The topology network describes a spatial object in terms of its boundaries, the part-of network describes a spatial object in terms of its parts, and the spatial associations network describes the spatial object in terms of its relationships to other spatial objects. All three of the networks can be used in combination or alone to answer queries to the spatial information system. The Digital Anatomist Structural Abstraction together with the other components of the Digital Anatomist Foundational Model will provide the information for describing and reasoning about anatomical entities.

Anatomy↗
PubMed1998

The digital anatomist foundational model: principles for defining and structuring its concept domain.

We define a foundational model as an abstraction of a body of knowledge that explicitly declares the principles and concepts necessary for coherently and consistently modelling a knowledge domain. Principles for a foundational model of anatomy are defined and used to specify the components of such a model. These components include an anatomy ontology (Ao), an anatomical structural abstraction (ASA), an anatomical transformation abstraction (ATA) and metaknowledge (Mk), which comprises the rules for representing relationships in the other three components of the model. The foundational model Fm is therefore specified as the four-tuple Fm = (Ao,ASA,ATA,Mk). We hypothesize that this abstraction captures the information that is sufficient and necessary for describing the anatomy of any physical entity that constitutes the body, as well as that of the body itself.

Anatomy↗
PubMed1998

The potential of the digital anatomist foundational model for assuring consistency in UMLS sources.

Inconsistent anatomical concept representation can be identified in anatomy textbooks and hard copy term lists, as well as in UMLS source vocabularies and other controlled medical terminologies. In this report we select some examples of inconsistent representations of anatomical concepts, and illustrate how these inconsistencies can be explained and reconciled by the Digital Anatomist Foundational Model. We use this process for gaining a measure of the validity of the logic-based Model.

Anatomy↗
PubMed1998

Requirements for an on-line knowledge-based anatomy information system.

User feedback from the Digital Anatomist Web-based anatomy atlases, together with over 20 years of anatomy teaching experience, were used to formulate the requirements and system design for a next-generation anatomy information system. The main characteristic of this system over current image-based approaches is that it is knowledge-based. A foundational model of anatomy is accessed by an intelligent agent that uses its knowledge about the available anatomy resources and the user types to generate customized interfaces. Current usage statistics suggest that even partial implementation of this design will be of great practical value for both clinical and educational needs.

Anatomy, Artistic↗