Abstract
A user-interactive rule-based computer program was developed for the purpose of mapping and merging multiple hierarchical thesauri. The program DynaSaurI (Dynamic Thesaurus Integration) was tested on subsets of two medical thesauruses, the Systemized Nomenclature of Medicine (SNOMED) and the Medical Subject Headings (MeSH). Each theasurus is treated as a knowledge base, containing information both in the terms and in the various types of relationships between terms. DynaSaurI uses combinations of string matching and tree browsing to propose a ranked array of related MeSH terms for each SNOMED term presented. A medical expert selected the closest match from the array of terms proposed by DynaSaurI and entered the appropriate type of relationship between the terms. The information acquired from the expert was then used to refine DynaSaurI's mapping rules. With DynaSaurI, all 84 SNOMED concepts were successfully merged with and mapped to MeSH Main Headings; 74 (88%) were mapped by the initial DynaSaurI pass, and the remainder by incorporating the user's responses. All merging utilized the relationship descriptions (e.g., “is narrower than”) provided by the on-line interaction with the medical expert.
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