Variation in the representation of human anatomy within digital resources: Implications for data integration

Clinical informatics makes use of anatomical representation-particularly in the form of anatomical terms. But differences and ambiguities in naming anatomical structures and partitioning the body can complicate efforts to interlink anatomical resources and integrate clinical data. To better understand differences in representations of human anatomy, we compare five digital resources: a formal ontology, a terminology, and three 3D graphics applications. Because the graphics applications offer explicit representation of the boundaries and partitions of anatomical structures, they reveal the differences in modeling of anatomy that may not be apparent through text-based representations. The variations in these resources allow us to categorize differences in representations of anatomy and to highlight the importance of this topic in the context of clinical informatics.