title: The role of definitions in biomedical concept representation.
abstract: The Foundational Model (FM) of anatomy, developed as an anatomical enhancement of UMLS, classifies anatomical entities in a structural context. Explicit definitions have played a critical role in the establishment of FM classes. Essential structural properties that distinguish a group of anatomical entities serve as the differentiate for defining classes. These, as well as other structural attributes, are introduced as template slots in Protégé, a frame-based knowledge acquisition system, and are inherited by descendants of the class. A set of desiderata has evolved during the instantiation of the FM for formulating definitions. We contend that 1. these desiderata generalize to non-anatomical domains and 2. satisfying them in constituent vocabularies of UMLS would enhance the quality of information retrievable through UMLS.
authors.affiliation: Biological Structure, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA.
authors.forename: J
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Michael
authors.forename: J L
authors.initials: JL
authors.lastname: Mejino
authors.forename: C
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Rosse
mesh_terms: D000715:Anatomy / Q000145:classification*; D001185:Artificial Intelligence; D004014:Dictionaries as Topic; D006801:Humans; D012660:Semantics; D009626:Terminology as Topic; D017432:Unified Medical Language System; D018875:Vocabulary, Controlled