A methodology for ontology reuse : the case of the abdominal ultrasound ontology

Zulkarnain, NZ; Meziane, F

Abstract

There are abundance of existing biomedical ontologies such as the National Cancer Institute
Thesaurus (NCIT), the Foundational Model of Anatomy (FMA) and the Systematized
Nomenclature of Medicine-Clinical Terms (SNOMED CT). Implementing these ontologies in
a particular system however, may cause unnecessary high usage of memory and slows down
the systems’ performance. On the other hand, building a new ontology from scratch will
require additional time and efforts. Therefore, this research explores the ontology reuse
approach in order to develop an Abdominal Ultrasound Ontology (AUO) by extracting
concepts from existing biomedical ontologies. This paper presents the reader with a step by
step method in reusing ontologies together with suggestions of the off-the-shelf tools that can
be used to ease the process. The result shows that ontology reuse is beneficial especially in
the biomedical field as it allows for developers from the non-technical background to build
and use domain specific ontology with ease. It also allows for developers with technical
background to develop ontologies with minimal involvements from domain experts. The
methodology proposed is also adaptable as it allows the ontology to be updated fairly easily.

Citation

Zulkarnain, N., & Meziane, F. (2019). A methodology for ontology reuse : the case of the abdominal ultrasound ontology. International Journal of Intelligent Information Technologies, 15(4), 1-21. https://doi.org/10.4018/IJIIT.2019100101

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: May 28, 2019
• Online Publication Date: Sep 30, 2019
• Publication Date: Sep 30, 2019
• Deposit Date: May 28, 2019
• Publicly Available Date: Oct 1, 2019
• Journal: International Journal of Intelligent Information Technologies
• Print ISSN: 1548-3657
• Electronic ISSN: 1548-3665
• Publisher: IGI Global
• Volume: 15
• Issue: 4
• Pages: 1-21
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.4018/IJIIT.2019100101
• Publisher URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.4018/IJIIT.2019100101
• Related Public URLs: https://www.igi-global.com/journal/international-journal-intelligent-information-technologies/1089