1. Formal Conceptualization of Dental Diagnoses: Status Report
Miguel Humberto Torres-Urquidy DDS MS,
Titus Schleyer DMD PhD
Department of Biomedical Informatics,
Center for Dental Informatics
University of Pittsburgh
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2. introduction dentistry and the use of electronic information in the US
medical specialty with approx.
150,000 practitioners
computerization 90% for administrative
purposes (vs. 20% for clinical)
limited use of standards
opportunity

3. introduction ? lack of standardization impedes
exchange of clinical information
evaluation of treatment decisions ?
suggestion of treatment alternatives

4. introduction variety of sources canonical knowledge
empirical knowledge
shared conceptualization

5. background dental diagnostic knowledge space
dental terminologies – diagnostic code sets
canonical knowledge
SNODENT, TSDDC and others
ontological representations
narrow focus
Long and Goldberg. Sjögren syndrome
Marie Gustafsson et al. Oral medicine

6. methods
characterizing the dental diagnostic domain for general dental practice
bottom-up approach
multiple sources
formalized representation using OWL

7. verbalizations difficult cases verbalizations clinical encounters
data sources
Canonical
knowledge
Empirical
knowledge +
canonical
set of textbooks
clinical cases
verbalizations difficult cases
extraction
dentists –
dental students
verbalizations clinical encounters
semantic networks
consolidation

8. semantic networks from our different data sources
canonical semantic network
manual integration of terms
empirical semantic network
from patient cases – breadth first approach
dental school
from patient cases – depth first approach
from verbalizations – paper cases analyzed by dentists
practicing
dentists
from verbalizations – clinical encounters

9. formalizing our conceptualization
integrating both canonical and empirical
canonical
vs.
term by term in the network
dental caries + caries in #8 + amalgam
into
following guidelines for ontology development?
BFO, DOLCE…

10. results ongoing process about 7000+ terms 7 semantic networks
differences representation

11. verbalization – challenging case
results
semantic networks
breadth first
depth first
verbalization – challenging case

12. results concept formation discrepancies canonical view
less experienced clinician
dental caries
caries
communicative unit
representation level?
empirical view
more experienced clinician
treated with an amalgam
caries
cognitive unit
surrogate of

13. results our ontology limited “is_a” relationships
property “treated_with”
Perdurants vs. Endurants
DOLCE  cognitive focus

14. > discussion + limited electronic use of diagnostic
information among dentists in the US
>
decreases our ability to provide
electronic support +
Friedman’s
we are developing a formal conceptualization
of the dental diagnostic domain

15. discussion using a bottom-up approach that includes multiple sources
found that the practical use of information
differs from the canonical
canonical
vs.
require us to alter our conceptualization
in order to accommodate this dual “use”

16. limitations coverage – limited domain
sources – clinical cases may not cover
all knowledge for general dental practice
canonical
currently there is a limited understanding of the differences between less and more experienced practitioners and how they use information
vs.

17. acknowledgements + Dr. Christopher Chute
our anonymous reviewers for their criticisms and suggestions
study supported by the NIH – NIDCR grant R21DE
canonical +

18. Formal Conceptualization of Dental Diagnoses:
thank you
Formal Conceptualization of Dental Diagnoses:
Status Report
Miguel Humberto Torres-Urquidy DDS MS
Titus Schleyer DMD PhD
Department of Biomedical Informatics
Center for Dental Informatics
University of Pittsburgh