KR Meeting Minutes 2/24/05
(Also includes some minutes from PRO meeting)
1) Individuals and normal variation:
a) The ARO is more than just the AT, it includes references to things in OPA
b) The ARO represents all normal variations
c) The “Individual KB” (yellow box) contains only those variations that a given
individual expresses
d) We wanted to say that the yellow box was an instantiation of the ARO
i) This cannot be, the ARO does not contain operators or references to operators
ii) In some sense it is a hybrid instantiation of ARO+TAO
e) Note: as the picture indicates many pathological attributes may just be physical
attributes that are outside of the normal range.
f) The orange box includes the pathology for the individual to which this KB applies
g) Variations are instantiated from individual data that asserts the presence or
absence of a variation (check box)
i) Attribute values are also instantiated here
ii) This is a temporal snapshot of an individual
h) My (Todd) concern about the ARO and the proposed “check box” approach to
normal variation (I mentioned 2 issues in the meeting that I would like to
elaborate here)
i) Changing the semantics of a slot
(1) Consider the scenario (nevermind if this is nonsense anatomy, I am sure
that you can construct a similar but valid example) where the diagonal
artery has a supplies slot and in one variation it supplies myocardial zones
7 and 8 and in another variation it supplies zones 8, 10, and 11
(a) Then the values in the arterial supply slot for the diagonal artery are
{7,8,10,11}.
(b) In the FMA we have always assumed that the there is an implicit union
of the values in a slot
(i) i.e. if the continuous with slot of Right atrium contains {Right
ventricle, Coronary sinus, Small cardiac vein, …} then we
understand that it is continuous with ALL of these things (at least
canonically) not some subset of them OR some other subset
(c) In the proposed approach to modeling variation we would not mean 7
AND 8 AND 10 AND 11, but rather (7 AND 8) OR (8 AND 10 AND
11)
(d) This might not be a big deal if we reify it as we do parts (where in
parts we say partition 1, partition 2, etc.) into variation 1, variation 2,
etc.
(i) This may well be the solution that you had in mind, but it is more
than just a check box, a check box would not be filled until you
talk about an individual expressing a particular variation, this is
about making the groupings explicit
ii) Second issue with “check box” approach, grouping all of the boxes that
should be check with a variation
(1) Consider again my anatomically fictitious diagonal artery story, suppose
we have the same two possible sets of continuous relationships mentioned
above, for 2 different anatomical variations
(2) Now suppose that these 2 variations also have associated with them 2
different subsets of values for the adjacency relationship of the diagonal
artery
(3) What seems to be missing here is that this is a contradiction. We must
know not only that you can select only one set or the other in each slot, but
that choosing a set in one slot determines the set in another
(a) This relationship would likely need to be modeled somewhere, but as a
property of what?
(b) Since the presence or absence of a variation occurs at the instance
level, we could determine this correctness at the instance level if again
we use a reified relationship that tags sets with the variation to which
they belong
(c) Again this may have been what others have in mind, but it is more
than just a check box
i) Possible names for yellow box (what I called individual KB above)
i) Personalized (or Individual) ARO
ii) Personalized (or Individual) Global State
iii) Instance of ARO
iv) Physiological Global State – PGS (We sort of settled on this one)
j) Possible names for the orange box
i) Pathological Global State – PathGS
k) PGS is an instantiation of ARO (plus something from TAO)
l) PathGS is an instantiation of ARO (plus something from TAO) plus some PathRO
amendments
2) Fun with acronyms and KB descriptions
a) OPA subsumes PAT (to clear up some confusion)
b) OPA and Pathological attributes could be merged
i) Same sort of ontological structure
ii) May be able to do the same for TAO and Pathological operators (although
these are different sorts of things)
c) KB equations
i) FMA = ARO + OPA (note that DO is in OPA)
ii) PRO = FMA + TAO + Physical state + Physical process
iii) PathRO = PRO + Pathological material entities + Pathological processes +
Pathological state
iv) Digital Human KB (DHKB) = FMA + PRO + PathRO
(1) Actually PathRO already subsumes FMA and PRO so DHKB = PathRO
(2) Still missing development/embryology
(a) Actually this will eventually be covered in the ATA
v) To make the above word salad more comprehensible, see figure below: