Methods Inf Med 1991; 30(04): 275-283
DOI: 10.1055/s-0038-1634842
Original Article
Schattauer GmbH

A Medical Text Analysis System for German - Syntax Analysis[*]

P. M. Pietrzyk
1   Department of Medical Informatics, Georg August University, Göttingen, Germany
› Author Affiliations
The author is particularly grateful to Prof. Dr. Carl Theo Ehlers for his active interest in this work and his continuous encouragement.
Further Information

Publication History

Publication Date:
07 February 2018 (online)

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Abstract:

Much information about patients is stored in free text. Hence, the computerized processing of medical language data has been a well-known goal of medical informatics resulting in different paradigms. In Gottingen, a Medical Text Analysis System for German (abbr. MediTAS) has been under development for some time, trying to combine and to extend these paradigms. This article concentrates on the automated syntax analysis of German medical utterances. The investigated text material consists of 8,790 distinct utterances extracted from the summary sections of about 18,400 cytopathological findings reports. The parsing is based upon a new approach called Left-Associative Grammar (LAG) developed by Hausser. By extending considerably the LAG approach, most of the grammatical constructions occurring in the text material could be covered.

* This article is mainly a synopsis of the author’s Habilitation thesis