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Parts, Locations, and Holes — Formal Reasoning about Anatomical Structures

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Artificial Intelligence in Medicine (AIME 2001)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNAI,volume 2101))

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Abstract

We propose an ontology engineering framework for the anatomy domain, focusing on mereotopological properties of parts, locations and empty spaces (holes). We develop and formally describe a basic ontology consisting of the mutually disjoint primitives solid object, hole and boundary. We embed the relations part-of and location-of into a parsimonious description logic (ALC) and emulate advanced reasoning across these relations — such as transitivity at the T-Box level — by taxonomic subsumption. Unlike common conceptualizations we do not distinguish between solids and the regions they occupy, as well as we allow solids to have holes as proper parts. Concrete examples from human anatomy are used to support our claims.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Abteilung Medizinische Informatik, Universitätsklinikum Freiburg, Stefan-Meier-Str. 26, D-79104, Freiburg, Germany

    Stefan Schulz

  2. Linguistische Informatik / Computerlinguistik, Universität Freiburg, Werthmannplatz 1, D-79085, Freiburg, Germany

    Udo Hahn

Authors
  1. Stefan Schulz
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  2. Udo Hahn
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer Science, University of Pavia, Via Ferrata, 1, 27100, Pavia, Italy

    Silvana Quaglini

  2. Departamento de Informática Faculdade de Ciências e Tecnologia, Universidade Nova de Lisboa, 2825-114, Caparica, Portugal

    Pedro Barahona

  3. Department of Medical Informatics and Image Analysis, Aalborg University, Fredrik Bajersv ej 7D, 9220, AlborgØst, Denmark

    Steen Andreassen

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© 2001 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Schulz, S., Hahn, U. (2001). Parts, Locations, and Holes — Formal Reasoning about Anatomical Structures. In: Quaglini, S., Barahona, P., Andreassen, S. (eds) Artificial Intelligence in Medicine. AIME 2001. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 2101. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-48229-6_41

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-48229-6_41

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-42294-5

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-48229-1

  • eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive

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