From CVRG Wiki

Aim

The purpose of ontology development within the CVRG is to make data easier to share. The current domain for ontology development is in electrocardiograms (ECGs).

Development

As described in the main CVRG website, our ontology development is "bottom up." We began by drawing terms from the following publications:

• Buxton, AE, et.al. ACC/AHA/HRS 2006 Key Data Elements and Definitions for Electrophysiological Studies and Procedures: A Report of the American College of Cardiology/American Heart Association Task Force on Clinical Data Standards ACC/AHA/HRS Writing Committee to Develop Data Standards on Electrophysiology) Circulation. 2006;114(23):2534-70. (PMID:17130345)
• Blackburn, H, et.al. The Minnesota Code Classification System for Electrocardiographic Findings. Retrieved from: http://www.sph.umn.edu/epi/ecg/mncode.pdf.
• Rautaharju PM, et.al. The Novacode criteria for classification of ECG abnormalities and their clinically significant progression and regression. J Electrocardiol. 1998 Jul;31(3):157-87. (PMID:9682893)

After extracting terms from these respective publications, we worked with the National Center for Biomedical Ontologies (NCBO), through a Driving Biomedical Project, to develop the ECG ontology through re-use of existing terms and the addition of new ones. Using tools available in the NCBO Bioportal, we developed a prototype tool to search terms in existing ontologies and produce an Web Ontology Language (OWL) file for use with the Protege ontology editing tool. An abstract was submitted to and a presentation on the tool was given at the 11th International Protege Conference. The functionality and methods used in the tool have since been integrated into Bioportal and WebProtege, allowing users to dynamically select terms from other ontologies and insert the terms into the ontology being built.

Review

The ECG ontology is available on Bioportal. It is open to review using the NCBO Bioportal Notes feature. A movie describing use of the Notes feature can be found here. The ontology itself has already been reviewed by the following groups:

• Hopkins researchers
  • Ted Abraham
  • Larisa Tereschenko
  • Joao Lima
  • David Strauss
  • Nathan Mewton
• CVRG ontology advisory board
  • Mark Musen
  • Barry Smith
  • Mary Shimoyama
  • Daniel Rubin
• Members of the following NHLBI-funded clinical studies
  • MESA
  • CARDIA
  • Jackson Heart Study
  • CTRIP
  • HCM Consortium