A conceptual graphs modeling of UMLS components

The Unified Medical Language System (UMLS) of the U.S. National Library of Medicine is a complex collection of terms, concepts, and relationships derived from standard classifications. Potential applications would benefit from a high level representation of its components. This paper proposes a conceptual representation of both the Metathesaurus and the Semantic Network of the UMLS based on conceptual graphs. It shows that the addition of a dictionary of concepts to the UMLS knowledge base allows the capability to exploit it pertinently. This dictionary defines more precisely the core concepts and adds constraints on their use. Constraints are dedicated to guide an "intelligent" browsing of the UMLS knowledge sources.