Anatomical Enhancements to the UMLS

This work is being performed under National Libray of Medicine contract NO1 LM43546, Cornelius Rosse, Prinicpal Investigator.

The goal of this work is to add anatomical terminology and semantic relationships to the UMLS. Ove 18,000 terms and synonyms, together with a similar number of semantic links, were delivered to NLM in time to be included as a new knowledge source for the 1998 UMLS Metathesaurus. This terminology provides unique indentifers for all structures visible in the human thorax to 1 mm resolution. As such it will be a valuable source of terminology for such projects as the NLM Visible Human.

This contract has recently been extended to cover the abdomen.

For our own work the terminlogy, and more importantly, our classification hierarchy, provides a basis for our work in symbolic knowledge representation in anatomy.