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Overview and utilization of the NCI thesaurus
Gilberto Fragoso1, Sherri de Coronado, Margaret Haber
1NCI Center for Bioinformatics, 6116 Executive Blvd, National Cancer Institute, NIH, Bethesda, MD 20892, USA. fragosog@mail.nih.gov
Comparative and Functional Genomics
|July 17, 2008
Summary
The NCI Thesaurus is a comprehensive cancer-focused reference terminology. It supports translational research by organizing 36,000 concepts and 110,000 terms for data sharing and analysis.
Area of Science:
- Biomedical Informatics
- Cancer Research Terminology
Background:
- The National Cancer Institute (NCI) Thesaurus is a critical resource for cancer research.
- It was developed to standardize terminology and facilitate translational research.
- The thesaurus covers a wide range of cancer-related scientific domains.
Purpose of the Study:
- To describe the structure, content, and accessibility of the NCI Thesaurus.
- To highlight its role in supporting coding activities and data integration within the NCI.
- To showcase its utility for the broader research community.
Main Methods:
- The NCI Thesaurus is structured into approximately 36,000 concepts and 110,000 terms.
- Concepts are organized into 20 subdomains with a cancer-centric focus.
- It utilizes description logic (DL) for concept modeling and defines relationships between concepts.
Main Results:
- The NCI Thesaurus contains rich annotations including preferred names, synonyms, definitions, and external references.
- Approximately 90 types of named relations are declared within the terminology.
- The thesaurus is produced by the Enterprise Vocabulary Services project.
Conclusions:
- The NCI Thesaurus is accessible programmatically via the caBIO API and through a web interface.
- It is available for download in various formats, including OWL (Web Ontology Language).
- This accessibility and format flexibility promote its widespread utilization in cancer research and data analysis.
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