Research On TCM Conceptual Information Model: An Ontology-based Approach

TCM is a medical science formed and developed in medical practices with its particular nature that it sets up its unique ideological, methodological and theoretical system, originating from the laws of physiological movement and changes and combining knowledge and adjusting measures on the basis of clinical practices to ensure human health. The rich repositories of TCM theories and clinical experiences have provided TCM with significant academic value and practical value. With the development of computer science and relevant techologies, it has become reality for TCM classics, theories, records and literature and other data from rich TCM practices and innovations to be exchanged from different locations far way from each other. The re-categorization and utilization of TCM information using modern science and technology have been widely recognized, with many findings from relevant studies.However, the linguistic features of TCM, in this process, havecaused difficulty in the objective expression of TCM knowledge, leading to barriers in TCM information exchange, information processing, knowledge management, etc. For example, it is hard to share and inter-operate data between TCM databanks, and inaccuracy exists in information retrieval. Another example is the bottleneck that exists between the organization model of TCM knowledge and data mining, therefore, results of data mining, such as "the pairing correlation between gypsum and rhizoma anemarrhenae" and "the curable effect of pill of six ingredients with rehmannia on deficiency of yin" can only achieve verification of existing TCM knowledge or that of the exploration route, but not able to produce new knowledge. The primary cause of the problem lies in the contradiction between the abstract and broad way of semantic expression represntation of TCM terms and the scientific and specific side clinical practices of TCM. It has become a crucial question to be addressed in TCM informatization to interpret and describeTCM theory and practical experiences by means of modem computer science, to represent knowledge from a semantic perspective, to achieve efficient and accurate collection, storage and utilization of the vast amount of TCM information, and to lay a foundation for the exchange and sharing of diverse and isomeric TCM information resources.In this regard, medical terminology systems, such as MeSH, UMLS, and SNOMED CT, have been created based on their spplicationneeds, and their findings are widely utilized in the international medical science. But there are many barriers to adapting such terminology framework to the expression of TCM knowledge due to the different philosophical foundationsof the two medical systems. Western medicine, based on reductionism, seeks to find the material being behind phenomena, and summarize phenomena with abstract concepts formed by an abstract way of thinking. It ignores relations and properties the object possesses yet the cognitive subject does not care about or is not able to manage, while focusing on the inherent, stable and common relations and properties. TCM, based on traditional Chinese philosophy featuring the idea of respect for a holistic nature, seeks to keep the natural status of the object of cognition, and collect relationship information to find out the inherent laws of phenomena by means of imagery concepts formed by an imagery way of thinking. Such incompatibility could be elaborated from 3 aspects:firstly, the incompatibility of the framework. For example, the top framework of UMLS is:definite object and incident. Definite object refers to the "broad types adopted to categorize physical objects or conceptual objects", and incident refers to the "movement, process and status of groups". It is hard to properly position the framework based on such conception in basic TCM theory terms such as "TCM state of internal organs", "yin-yang and five elements", "attacks by six climate pathogenic factors", and "qi-blood-body fluid"; Secondly, a lack of strict hyponymic relation between layers within the framework. For example, the root node for UMLS is a "conception system", meaning all nodes are "concepts", but "ideas or concepts" appear in a lower level, forming a self-containing relation, i.e. "ideas" are a sub-category of "ideas", hence an endless loop; Thirdly, a lack of terminology correlation expression guided by basic TCM theory. E.g. the relation between "upper-jiao"and "mist" in "the upper-jiao resembling mist", the relation between "orient", "wind" and "acid" in "The orient produces wind; wind produces wood; wood produces acid.Drawing on the medical terminology system, TCM has set up its own terminology system, which has already played an importance role in TCM information research. Meanwhile, TCM informatics is by nature part of a latest complicated academic domain, and the rich connotation of TCM terms and the uncertainty of the expression of its conception relation has led to a bottleneck in the informatization of the rich TCM information resources, directly impacting information retrieval, extraction, representation, natural language semantization and data mining, which has been recognized as a world problem and priority of academic research. How to utilize TCM information with modern IT on the basis on TCM holism and syndrome differentiation, describe and organize TCM concepts, establish correlation between TCM concepts and support the effective utilization of TCM information has become an incumbent approach to implement evidence-based medical researches, sum up TCM diagnose and treatment laws, turn implicit TCM experience to shared explicit knowledge, and to inherit and innovate TCM information."Ontology", derived from a philosophical concept, is commonly defined in the information science as "agreement to use the shared vocabulary in a coherent and consistent manner". Ontology is able to describe the conceptual model framework of domain-related issues from semantic and knowledge perspectives. It comprises the core information of concepts and can solve the sharing and re-utilization issue of domain knowledge, and is therefore attracting more and more attention as a means to express knowledge. The purpose of constructing ontology is to share and communicate knowledge, under which circumstance; the form of ontology is specialized to definition of typical vocabulary, the simplest form being structural levels to describe categories and their containing relation. The process of constructing ontology is one that clarifies concepts, deeps and improves the understanding of the conceptual system. It can demonstrate TCM's features and its difference from western medicine to construct TCM ontology depicting TCM concepts and conceptual relation in a clear and accurate manner, explore TCM knowledge from a semantic perspective and support multi-dimensional, visualized and dynamic model expression and organization of TCM knowledge and related information resources under the guidance of basic TCM theory.In the domain of TCM knowledge, clinical diagnosis and treatment are guided by basic TCM theoiy featuring rich connotation and complicated conceptual relation. The research, taking basic TCM theory for example, describes TCM concepts and builds up the correlation between TCM concepts from an informatics perspective, explores the methodology of setting up information models for TCM concepts and provides reference for the organization and construction of TCM information knowledge.Chapter 1 starts with a review of TCM literature, putting forward the significance of TCM conceptual information model to TCM information expression; it describes and explains the concept and connotation of information model, defining model and information model, its categorization, principle and methods of establishment; it introduces in general the development of ontology method study clarifying its concept, categorization, basic features, status quo of study, way of development, language and tools of expression, and the difficulties ontology study is faced with. Relevant basic concepts are identified.Chapter 2 analyses the significance and prospect of TCM conceptual information model, and puts forward the aim of the research, viz. to describe TCM demand for conceptual information with an object-oriented method so as to identify key conceptual information of basic theory of TCM and conduct methodology exploration and model research of TCM conceptual information model through ontology method, thus laying a foundation for the integration of TCM information system. The key point to be addressed in this research is put forward in this chapter, i.e. the guiding principles of constructing TCM conceptual information models, the core composition of TCM conceptual information models, the structure and expression of TCM conceptual information models and the relation and difference between TCM conceptual information models and that of western medicine.Chapter 3 elaborates on the methodology to establish TCM conceptual information model and clearly introduces the principles, methods and technical approaches to build up TCM conceptual information models.Chapter 4 conducts an applied demonstration research on basic theory of TCM conceptual information model, adopting conceptual terms from Terms of Basic Theory of TCM (National Standard GB-T 20348-2006); domain ontology description language MDOSL (Multi-Disciplinary Ontology System Language) is adopted as the presentation language of model establishment; the basis of model framework is clarified that the structural framework of Suggested Upper Merged Ontology (SUMO) is referred to as the basic framework to establish basic theory of TCM conceptual information model; by means of extraction, abstraction, analysis and demonstration, the relation between 26 basic TCM theory terms are systematically categorized.Chapter 5 carries out a comparative study between ontology method and other knowledge organization methods, stating the relation between TCM ontology conceptual information model and 3 other medical terminology systems based on category theory, information process model and ontology method.Chapter 6 systematically sums up the TCM ontology method to construct TCM conceptual information model, and put forth the recommendation of applying SUMO in TCM domain in the future.The innovation points of the research are:1. It puts forward the method to establish TCM ontology for the first time with an attempt to establish a basic TCM theory conceptual information model with domain ontology method, thus laying the foundation for the exploration of interpreting the correlation between TCM concepts with information modeling approach;2. It categorized the relation between basic theory of TCM conceptual terms for the first time, and puts forward the suggestion to enrich the UMLS on the basis of systematic contrast study;3. It refers to the SUMO for the first time to put forward the basic framework for basic theory of TCM conceptual model.