Title: Conceptual and computational models of information retrieval with the UMLS knowledge sources

Authors: Michel Joubert, Jean-Jacques Robert, Francois Miton, Laurent Nal, Marius Fieschi

Addresses: CERTIM, Faculte de Medecine, Boulevard Pierre Dramard, 13326 Marseille Cedex 15, France. ' CERTIM, Faculte de Medecine, Boulevard Pierre Dramard, 13326 Marseille Cedex 15, France. ' CERTIM, Faculte de Medecine, Boulevard Pierre Dramard, 13326 Marseille Cedex 15, France. ' CERTIM, Faculte de Medecine, Boulevard Pierre Dramard, 13326 Marseille Cedex 15, France. ' CERTIM, Faculte de Medecine, Boulevard Pierre Dramard, 13326 Marseille Cedex 15, France

Abstract: The Unified Medical Language System (UMLS) of the US National Library of Medicine is a complex collection of terms, concepts and relationships derived from standard classifications. Potential applications would benefit from a high level representation of its components. This work proposes a conceptual representation of both the Metathesaurus and the Semantic Network of the UMLS based on conceptual graphs. It shows that the addition of a dictionary of concepts to the UMLS knowledge allows the capability to exploit it pertinently. This dictionary defines more precisely the core concepts and adds constraints on their use. Constraints are dedicated to guide an ||intelligent|| browsing of the UMLS knowledge sources and to build queries to information databases. A computational model of information retrieval based on the UMLS knowledge sources is then proposed.

Keywords: information databases; information retrieval; Unified Medical Language System; conceptual design; computational modelling.

DOI: 10.1504/IJHTM.1999.004482

International Journal of Healthcare Technology and Management, 1999 Vol.1 No.3/4, pp.270 - 280

Published online: 10 May 2004 *

Full-text access for editors Full-text access for subscribers Purchase this article Comment on this article