title: On parts and holes: the spatial structure of the human body.
abstract: Spatial representation and reasoning is a central component of medical informatics. The spatial concepts most often used in medicine are not the quantitative, point-based concepts of classical geometry, but rather qualitative relations among extended objects such as body parts. A mereotopology is a formal theory of qualitative spatial relations, such as parthood and connection. This paper considers how an extension of mereotopology which includes also location relations can be used to represent and reason about the spatial structure of the human body.
authors.affiliation: Institute for Formal Ontology and Medical Information Service, University of Leipzig, Härtelstrasse 16-18, 04107 Leipzig, Germany. maureen.donnelly@ifomis.uni-leipzig.de
authors.forename: Maureen
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Donnelly
mesh_terms: D000715:Anatomy; D000818:Animals; D005547:Foreign Bodies; D018594:Human Body; D006801:Humans; D008490:Medical Informatics; D010271:Parasites