Performance evaluation of unified medical language system®'s synonyms expansion to query PubMed

BMC Medical Informatics and Decision Making

Research Article

Stéfan Jacques Darmoni¹  Nicolas Griffon¹  Benoit Thirion¹  Gaetan Kerdelhue¹  Wiem Chebil²  Laetitia Rollin³  Jean-François Gehanno³ 

[1] CISMeF, Rouen University Hospital, Cour Leschevin, Porte 21, 3ème étage. 1 rue de Germont, 76031, Rouen Cedex, France;TIBS, Rouen University, LITIS EA 4108, Rouen, France;CISMeF, Rouen University Hospital, Cour Leschevin, Porte 21, 3ème étage. 1 rue de Germont, 76031, Rouen Cedex, France;TIBS, Rouen University, LITIS EA 4108, Rouen, France;Institute of Management, University of Sousse, Sousse, Tunisia;TIBS, Rouen University, LITIS EA 4108, Rouen, France;

关键词: MeSH Term;    Unify Medical Language System;    Prefer Term;    Relevant Citation;    MeSH Descriptor;   

DOI  :  10.1186/1472-6947-12-12

 received in 2011-09-15, accepted in 2012-02-29,  发布年份 2012

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundPubMed is the main access to medical literature on the Internet. In order to enhance the performance of its information retrieval tools, primarily non-indexed citations, the authors propose a method: expanding users' queries using Unified Medical Language System' (UMLS) synonyms i.e. all the terms gathered under one unique Concept Unique Identifier.MethodsThis method was evaluated using queries constructed to emphasize the differences between this new method and the current PubMed automatic term mapping. Four experts assessed citation relevance.ResultsUsing UMLS, we were able to retrieve new citations in 45.5% of queries, which implies a small increase in recall. The new strategy led to a heterogeneous 23.7% mean increase in non-indexed citation retrieved. Of these, 82% have been published less than 4 months earlier. The overall mean precision was 48.4% but differed according to the evaluators, ranging from 36.7% to 88.1% (Inter rater agreement was poor: kappa = 0.34).ConclusionsThis study highlights the need for specific search tools for each type of user and use-cases. The proposed strategy may be useful to retrieve recent scientific advancement.

【 授权许可】

Unknown   
© Griffon et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. 2012. This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.