Construction And Application Of Traditional Chinese Medicine Ontology Knowledge Base For Psoriasis Vulgaris

Psoriasis vulgaris is a common skin disease in clinic,it often leads to serious mental and economic burden to patients as it can damage the volume and cannot be cured.It has been proved that traditional Chinese medicine(TCM)is effective and safe in the treatment of psoriasis vulgaris according to many year's observation.The guidelines and expert consensus of psoriasis vulgar which are developed by many experts based on a large amount of evidence are the summary and embodiment of the current treatment,so they can provide guidance to clinicians.Ontology is a model of knowledge representation and organization which can realize knowledge expression,fusion,reuse,and lay the foundation for specific application.So construct the ontology knowledge base of TCM for psoriasis vulgaris based on the guidance and expert consensus is helpful for knowledge sharing and reuse,clinical use of clinical guidelines and expert consensus as well as the construction of auxiliary diagnosis and treatment system of psoriasis vulgaris.Objective:Screening the compatible top ontology from the existing mature ontology in term of the characteristics of TCM knowledge expression.In the meanwhile,the ontology knowledge base of TCM diagnosis and treatment is supposed to be constructed based on guidelines and expert consensus of psoriasis vulgaris which can realize knowledge expression and reasoning.On the basis of the knowledge base,we build the TCM auxiliary diagnosis and treatment system which can achieve the clinical auxiliary diagnosis and treatment of psoriasis vulgaris,meanwhile,the knowledge base is also proved to be of practical value.What's more,taking this as an example to explore the construction and application of TCM ontology.Method:The general formal ontology(GFO)is selected from many mature top ontologies as the knowledge expression model of TCM according to knowledge expression characteristics and diagnosis and treatment process of TCM through the literature research.At the same time,the seven-step method is selected to reference by comparing the mature ontology construction methods.Then,the knowledge base is constructed under the guide of seven-step method:firstly,determining the purpose of knowledge base construction,that is:construct ontology knowledge base of TCM diagnosis and treatment to realize the knowledge expression and construct the auxiliary diagnosis and treatment system.Then,extracting entities about diagnosis and treatment from the guidelines and expert consensus,building ontology classes and grades referring the knowledge in the guidelines and expert consensus and the application aim,then establishing object attributes and data attributes of the classes to realizing the semantic expression and property construction,finally setting specific instances,and using the HermiT 1.4.3.456 which is the plug-in of protege to verify the consistency of the ontology.Above all,the knowledge expression and knowledge base construction are realized,on the foundation of the knowledge base,the auxiliary diagnosis system of TCM psoriasis vulgaris is built by the D3 plug-ins,and the application of the knowledge base was realized preliminary.Result:Through the literature research,the appropriate top ontology(GFO)is selected as the framework,the knowledge of the guidelines and expert consensus is combed,organized and extracted.On the basis of that,we construct the ontology knowledge base of psoriasis vulgaris including 77 classes,183 instances,20 object attributes,6 data attributes,and 42 inference rules under the guideline of seven-step method,which have achieved knowledge fusion and knowledge expression from multiple data sources.The auxiliary diagnosis and treatment system is constructed on the foundation of the knowledge base,which preliminarily realize the function of visualization,knowledge retrieval,syndrome diagnosis,treatment recommendation and adverse event warning of psoriasis vulgaris.Conclusion:Ontology is an effective model of knowledge organization and representation.The ontology knowledge base of TCM psoriasis vulgaris is built based on guidelines and expert consensus which realize the knowledge integration,express and reasoning.Meanwhile,the auxiliary diagnosis and treatment system is constructed on the basis of the knowledge base,which initially realize the application of the ontology knowledge base.However,the degree of terms standardization and conceptualization in this knowledge base still needs to be improved,the source of knowledge needs to be further enriched,and the performance of the system also needs to be improved to make the ontology knowledge base more standardized,so it could facilitate knowledge sharing and reuse as well as the promotion and application of the auxiliary diagnosis and treatment system.