Biomedical subjects

Songmao Zhang

Publications and source records attributed to Songmao Zhang.

6 recordsLinked to original sources

PubMed2006

Experience in reasoning with the foundational model of anatomy in OWL DL.

The objective of this study is to compare description logics (DLs) and frames for representing large-scale biomedical ontologies and reasoning with them. The ontology under investigation is the Foundational Model of Anatomy (FMA). We converted it from its frame-based representation in Protégé into OWL DL. The OWL reasoner Racer helped identify unsatisfiable classes in the FMA. Support for consistency checking is clearly an advantage of using DLs rather than frames. The interest of reclassification was limited, due to the difficulty of defining necessary and sufficient conditions for anatomical entities. The sheer size and complexity of the FMA was also an issue.

Computational Biology↗

PubMed2005

Law and order: assessing and enforcing compliance with ontological modeling principles in the Foundational Model of Anatomy.

The objective of this study is to provide an operational definition of principles with which well-formed ontologies should comply. We define 15 such principles, related to classification (e.g., no hierarchical cycles are allowed; concepts have a reasonable number of children), incompatible relationships (e.g., two concepts cannot stand both in a taxonomic and partitive relation), dependence among concepts, and the co-dependence of equivalent sets of relations. Implicit relations--embedded in concept names or inferred from a combination of explicit relations--are used in this process in addition to the relations explicitly represented. As a case study, we investigate the degree to which the Foundational Model of Anatomy (FMA)--a large ontology of anatomy--complies with these 15 principles. The FMA succeeds in complying with all the principles: totally with one and mostly with the others. Reasons for non-compliance are analyzed and suggestions are made for implementing effective enforcement mechanisms in ontology development environments. The limitations of this study are also discussed.

Anatomy↗

PubMed2005

Of mice and men: aligning mouse and human anatomies.

This paper reports on the alignment between mouse and human anatomies, a critical resource for comparative science as diseases in mice are used as mod-els of human disease. The two ontologies under investigation are the NCI Thesaurus (human anatomy) and the Adult Mouse Anatomical Dictionary, each comprising about 2500 anatomical concepts. This study compares two approaches to aligning ontologies. One is fully automatic, based on a combination of lexical and structural similarity; the other is manual. The resulting mappings were evaluated by an expert. 715 and 781 mappings were identified by each method respectively, of which 639 are common to both and all valid. The applications of the map-ping are discussed from the perspective of biology and from that of ontology.

Anatomy↗

PubMed2005

Alignment of multiple ontologies of anatomy: deriving indirect mappings from direct mappings to a reference.

OBJECTIVE: To investigate the indirect alignment of two anatomical ontologies through a reference ontology and to compare it to direct alignment between these two ontologies. The ontologies under investigation are the Adult Mouse Anatomical Dictionary (MA) and the NCI Thesaurus (NCI). The Foundational Model of Anatomy serves as reference ontology. METHODS: The direct alignment employs a combination of lexical and structural similarity. The indirect alignment simply derives mappings from direct alignments to the reference ontology. RESULTS: The indirect MA-NCI alignment yielded 703 mappings and the direct alignment 715, 654 of which are common to both. The mappings specific to one approach were analyzed. CONCLUSIONS: When a reference ontology exists, indirect alignment of multiple ontologies through a reference represents a valid, cost-effective alternative to pairwise alignment.

Anatomy↗

PubMed2004

Comparing associative relationships among equivalent concepts across ontologies.

Methods for comparing associative relationships across ontologies often rely solely on lexical similarity between the names of the relationships, which may lead to missed matches and inaccurate matches. In this paper, we propose a novel method based on the analysis of paths between equivalent concepts across ontologies. Patterns of relationships are identified for each associative relationship. The most frequent patterns indicate a correspondence between an associative relationship in one ontology and one relationship (or combination thereof) in the other. We applied this method to two ontologies of anatomy. Our method was able to identify the correspondence between relationships even in the absence of lexical similarity between relationship names. The various types of matches identified are discussed as well as the application of this method to detecting inconsistencies across the ontologies.

Anatomy↗

PubMed2003

Aligning representations of anatomy using lexical and structural methods.

OBJECTIVE: The objective of this experiment is to develop methods for aligning two representations of anatomy (the Foundational Model of Anatomy and GALEN) at the lexical and structural level. METHODS: The alignment consists of the following four steps: 1)acquiring terms, 2) identifying anchors (i.e., shared concepts) lexically, 3) acquiring explicit and implicit semantic relations, and 4) identifying anchors structurally. RESULTS: 2,353 anchors were identified by lexical methods, of which 91% were supported by structural evidence. No evidence was found for 7.5%of the anchors and 1.5% received negative evidence. DISCUSSION: The importance of taking advantage of implicit domain knowledge acquired through complementation,augmentation, and inference is discussed.

Anatomy↗