From: Outlier concepts auditing methodology for a large family of biomedical ontologies
Term | Definition | Example |
---|---|---|
is-a relationship | The subsumption relationship underlying the hierarchy of an ontology is called is-a relationship | A hierarchical is-a relationship connecting the concept Regulatory Gene to the concept Gene in Fig. 1a |
Lateral relationship | The non-hierarchical semantic relationship is called lateral relationship, in contrast to the hierarchical is-a relationship. It is called “role” in NCIt and “attribute relationship” in SNOMED CT | The NCIt concept Antigen Gene in Fig. 1a is defined by its lateral relationship (or role) Gene Plays Role In Process with the value Immune Response Process |
Area | An area is a group of all the concepts having exactly the same set of lateral relationship types | Figure 1b has an area colored in blue and labeled as Gene Plays Role In Process, summarizing four concepts |
Partial-area | A partial-area is a subunit in an area defined by a root concept describing the semantic of the partial-area, including also its all descendant concepts within the area sharing the same semantic | Figure 1c has a partial-area labeled as Antigen Gene (4) in the right blue area |
Small partial-area | A partial-area is small if its size is not larger than a bound b, where b is a small number, typically lower or equal to 10 | The partial-area MicroRNA Gene (2) in the left blue area in Fig. 1c is a small partial-area with size 2 |