Medical Physics Research Today is a free monthly online journal that collates and summarizes the latest research about Medical Physics, including details on medicine, radiotherapy, biomechanics, medical imaging.

Computation of semantic similarity within an ontology of breast pathology to assist inter-observer consensus.

Steichen O, Daniel-Le Bozec C, Thieu M, Zapletal E, Jaulent MC

INSERM U729, F-75006, Paris, France.

Computer-assisted consensus in medical imaging involves automatic comparison of morphological abnormalities observed by physicians in images. We built an ontology of morphological abnormalities in breast pathology to assist inter-observer consensus. Concepts of morphological abnormalities extracted from existing terminologies, published grading systems and medical reports were organized in an taxonomic hierarchy and furthermore linked by the relation "is a diagnostic criterion of" according to diagnostic meaning. We implemented position-based, content-based and mixed semantic similarity measures between concepts in this ontology and compared the results with experts' judgment. The position-based similarity measure using both taxonomic and non-taxonomic relations performed as well as the other measures and was used for automatic comparison of morphological abnormalities within the IDEM computer-assisted consensus platform.

Published 31 May 2006 in Comput Biol Med, 36(7): 768-88.
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