Anatomical information science

  • Authors:

  • Barry Smith;Jose L. V. Mejino;Stefan Schulz;Anand Kumar;Cornelius Rosse

  • Affiliations:

  • Department of Philosophy, University at Buffalo, Buffalo, NY;University of Washington, Seattle;Freiburg University Hospital, Freiburg, Germany;Institute for Formal Ontology and Medical Information Science, Saarland University, Saarbrücken, Germany;University of Washington, Seattle

  • Venue:
  • COSIT'05 Proceedings of the 2005 international conference on Spatial Information Theory
  • Year:
  • 2005

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Abstract

The Foundational Model of Anatomy (FMA) is a map of the human body. Like maps of other sorts – including the map-like representations we find in familiar anatomical atlases – it is a representation of a certain portion of spatial reality as it exists at a certain (idealized) instant of time. But unlike other maps, the FMA comes in the form of a sophisticated ontology of its object-domain, comprising some 1.5 million statements of anatomical relations among some 70,000 anatomical universals or kinds. It is further distinguished from other maps in that it represents not some specific portion of spatial reality (say: Leeds in 1996), but rather the generalized or idealized spatial reality associated with a generalized or idealized human being at some generalized or idealized instant of time. It will be our concern in what follows to outline the approach to ontology that is represented by the FMA and to argue that it can serve as the basis for a new type of anatomical information science. We also draw some implications for our understanding of spatial reasoning and spatial ontologies in general.