Enhancements of anatomical information in UMLS knowledge sources.

Although anatomical terminology forms a part of biomedical structured vocabularies, available sources lack the requisite granularity, semantic types and relationships for comprehensively and consistently representing anatomical concepts in machine readable form. Thoracic angiology was selected as a proof of concept experiment for in depth representation of symbolic information in gross anatomy through the enhancement of semantic types, concepts and relationships in UMLS. Provided the representation of concepts is comprehensive, hierarchies generated with four types of simple relationships are capable of displaying anatomical information from the systemic view point with sufficient detail to meet the needs of applications in basic science education and in the practice of surgical subspecialties.

Performance evaluation of a distance learning program.

This paper presents a performance metric which uses a single number to characterize the response time for a non-deterministic client-server application operating over the Internet. When applied to a Macintosh-based distance learning application called the Digital Anatomist Browser, the metric allowed us to observe that "A typical student doing a typical mix of Browser commands on a typical data set will experience the same delay if they use a slow Macintosh on a local network or a fast Macintosh on the other side of the country accessing the data over the Internet." The methodology presented is applicable to other client-server applications that are rapidly appearing on the Internet.

Knowledge-based client-server approach to structural information retrieval: the Digital Anatomist Browser.

Structural information can be defined as data and knowledge about biological objects ranging in size from molecules to the whole body. A framework is described for organizing structural information around a well-defined set of terminology and semantic relationships, and for disseminating multimedia structural information by means of a wide-area information server that is accessible over the internet. A Macintosh-based client of this server, called the Digital Anatomist Browser, has been used to teach neuroanatomy for the last 2 years.

A network model for wide area access to structural information.

Structural information in medicine is information about the physical body. Recent advances in medical imaging and biotechnology have greatly increased the amount and importance of structural information, and advances in networking envisioned by the High Performance Computing and Communication Initiative (HPCC) will allow this kind of information to be delivered to remote clients over wide area networks. One of the most important factors determining the usability of such a client-server configuration is the time delay between the request for information from the server, and its presentation to the user at the client.