title: Comparing inconsistent relationship configurations indicating UMLS errors.
abstract: The goal of this paper is to audit null-annotated parent-child pairs in the UMLS Metathesaurus. We have developed techniques for identifying suspicious pairs with high likelihood of errors by using inconsistencies between the hierarchical relationships of the Metathesaurus and the Semantic Network. Two formal conditions, called semantic inversion and lack of ancestry are investigated. Analyzing two corresponding samples shows that semantic inversion is significantly more likely to indicate an error than lack of ancestry, which in turn is more likely to indicate errors than a consistent configuration. We also discuss cases of parent-child pairs with semantic inversion that may be corrected by disambiguating the child.
authors.affiliation: NJIT, Newark, NJ, USA.
authors.forename: James
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Geller
authors.forename: C Paul
authors.initials: CP
authors.lastname: Morrey
authors.forename: Junchuan
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Xu
authors.forename: Michael
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Halper
authors.forename: Gai
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Elhanan
authors.forename: Yehoshua
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Perl
authors.forename: George
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Hripcsak
mesh_terms: D012660:Semantics; D017432:Unified Medical Language System