Interactive visualization and navigation of complex terminology systems, exemplified by SNOMED CT

Area of Science:

• Medical Informatics
• Information Visualization
• Graph Drawing

Background:

• Exploring complex medical terminologies like SNOMED CT and ICD-10 presents visualization challenges due to their intricate hierarchical structures.
• The presentation of search results significantly impacts user comprehension of these terminology systems.

Purpose of the Study:

• To present TermViz, a prototype system designed to visualize complex medical terminologies.
• To demonstrate the application of information visualization and graph drawing techniques for exploring large-scale terminologies.

Main Methods:

• TermViz employs "focus+context" and self-organizing layout methods.
• The prototype utilizes interactive animated graph navigation and semantic zooming for exploration.
• It is developed using Open Source Java components.

Main Results:

• The prototype facilitates simultaneous focus on multiple nodes within terminologies.
• Users can explore terminology systems interactively without losing context.
• TermViz demonstrates the utility of information visualization for large medical terminologies.

Conclusions:

• Information visualization methods can effectively aid the exploration of medical terminologies with millions of elements.
• TermViz serves as a foundation for further development in visualizing complex health information systems.