Artificial Intelligence in Medicine
Volume 39, Issue 3 , Pages 237-250, March 2007

Towards the ontological foundations of symbolic biological theories

  • Stefan Schulz

      Affiliations

    • Department of Medical Informatics, Freiburg University Hospital, Stefan-Meier-Strasse 26, 79104 Freiburg, Germany
    • Corresponding Author InformationCorresponding author. Tel.: +49 761 203 3252; fax: +49 761 203 6711.
    • ,
  • Udo Hahn

      Affiliations

    • Jena University Language and Information Engineering (JULIE) Lab, Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena, Germany

Received 22 December 2004; received in revised form 5 December 2006; accepted 6 December 2006.

Summary 

Objective

Support for the symbolic representation of the physical structure of living organisms by an ontologically solid and logically sound foundation as a basis for formal reasoning.

Methods

A set of canonical relations and attributes necessary for empirically adequate descriptions of biological entities is proposed.

Results

It is shown how a broad range of biological organisms and their parts can be represented by cascading theories which are ordered by the dimensions of granularity, development, species, and canonicity.

Conclusion

The proposed representation of biological objects is non-redundant and compatible with inter- and intra-species similarities, developmental stages and pathological deviations.

Keywords: Biomedical ontologies, Biomedical knowledge representation

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PII: S0933-3657(06)00188-6

doi:10.1016/j.artmed.2006.12.001

Artificial Intelligence in Medicine
Volume 39, Issue 3 , Pages 237-250, March 2007

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