Issues in the Structuring and Acquisition of an Ontology for Medical Language Understanding

P. Zweigenbaum; B. Bachimont; J. Bouaud; J. Charlet; J.-F. Boisvieux

doi:10.1055/s-0038-1634577

Methods of Information in Medicine, Table of Contents

Methods Inf Med 1995; 34(01/02): 15-24
DOI: 10.1055/s-0038-1634577

Original article

Schattauer GmbH

Issues in the Structuring and Acquisition of an Ontology for Medical Language Understanding

P. Zweigenbaum

¹DIAM – SIM, Service d’Informatique Médicale, Assistance Publique – Hôpitaux de Paris

,

B. Bachimont

¹DIAM – SIM, Service d’Informatique Médicale, Assistance Publique – Hôpitaux de Paris

,

J. Bouaud

¹DIAM – SIM, Service d’Informatique Médicale, Assistance Publique – Hôpitaux de Paris

,

J. Charlet

¹DIAM – SIM, Service d’Informatique Médicale, Assistance Publique – Hôpitaux de Paris

,

J.-F. Boisvieux

¹DIAM – SIM, Service d’Informatique Médicale, Assistance Publique – Hôpitaux de Paris

› Author Affiliations

Abstract

Abstract:

Medical natural language understanding basically aims at representing the contents of medical texts in a formal, conceptual representation. The understanding process itself increasingly relies on a body of domain knowledge, generally expressed in the same conceptual formalism. The design of such a conceptual representation is a key knowledge-acquisition issue. When representing knowledge, the most important point is to ensure that the formal exploitation of the knowledge representation conforms to its meaning in the domain. We examined some methodological and theoretical principles to enforce this conformity. These principles result from our experience in MENELAS, a medical language understanding project.

Keywords:

Natural Language Understanding - Ontology - Knowledge Acquisition - Knowledge Representation - Conceptual Graphs

Full Text

References

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