Structural group-based auditing of missing hierarchical relationships in UMLS

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

6-1-2009

Abstract

The Metathesaurus of the UMLS was created by integrating various source terminologies. The inter-concept relationships were either integrated into the UMLS from the source terminologies or specially generated. Due to the extensive size and inherent complexity of the Metathesaurus, the accidental omission of some hierarchical relationships was inevitable. We present a recursive procedure which allows a human expert, with the support of an algorithm, to locate missing hierarchical relationships. The procedure starts with a group of concepts with exactly the same (correct) semantic type assignments. It then partitions the concepts, based on child-of hierarchical relationships, into smaller, singly rooted, hierarchically connected subgroups. The auditor only needs to focus on the subgroups with very few concepts and their concepts with semantic type reassignments. The procedure was evaluated by comparing it with a comprehensive manual audit and it exhibits a perfect error recall. © 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Identifier

65649085898 (Scopus)

Publication Title

Journal of Biomedical Informatics

External Full Text Location

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbi.2008.08.006

ISSN

15320464

PubMed ID

18824248

First Page

452

Last Page

467

Issue

3

Volume

42

Grant

R 01 LM008445-01A2

Fund Ref

U.S. National Library of Medicine

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