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First published February 5, 2004 as JAMIA PrePrint; doi:10.1197/jamia.M1269
Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association 2004;11(3):195-206
© 2004 American Medical Informatics Association

A more recent version of this article appeared on May 1, 2004
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Submitted on October 14, 2002
Accepted on January 13, 2004

An Enriched UMLS Semantic Network with a Multiple Subsumption Hierarchy

Li Zhang MS1*, Yehoshua Perl PhD1, Michael Halper PhD1, James Geller PhD2, and James J. Cimino MD, PhD2

Affiliation of the authors: 1 Mathematics & Computer Science Department, Kean University, Union, NJ; Computer Science Department, New Jersey Institute of Technology, Newark, NJ; 2 Department of Medical Informatics, Columbia University, New York, NY; Computer Science Department, New Jersey Institute of Technology, Newark, NJ

* To whom correspondence should be addressed.

Objective The Unified Medical Language System's (UMLS's) Semantic Network's (SN's) two-tree structure is restrictive because it does not allow a semantic type to be a specialization of several other semantic types. In this paper, the SN is expanded into a multiple subsumption structure with a directed acyclic graph (DAG) IS-A hierarchy, allowing a semantic type to have multiple parents. New viable IS-A links are added as warranted.

Design Two methodologies are presented to identify and add new viable IS-A links. The first methodology is based on imposing the characteristic of connectivity on a previously presented partition of the SN. Four transformations are provided to find viable IS-A links in the process of converting the partition's disconnected groups into connected ones. The second methodology identifies new IS-A links via a string matching process involving names and definitions of various semantic types in the SN. A domain expert is needed to review all the results to determine the validity of the new IS-A links.

Results Nineteen new IS-A links are added to the SN, and four new semantic types are also created to support the multiple subsumption framework. The resulting network, called the Enriched Semantic Network (ESN), exhibits a DAG-structured hierarchy. A partition of the ESN containing 19 connected groups is also derived.

Conclusion The ESN is an expanded abstraction of the UMLS compared with the original SN. Its multiple subsumption hierarchy can accommodate semantic types with multiple parents. Its representation thus provides direct access to a broader range of subsumption knowledge.




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 J. Am. Med. Inform. Assoc.Home page
L. Zhang, M. Halper, Y. Perl, J. Geller, and J. J. Cimino
Relationship Structures and Semantic Type Assignments of the UMLS Enriched Semantic Network
J. Am. Med. Inform. Assoc., November 1, 2005; 12(6): 657 - 666.
[Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]


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