NAME

UMLS::Similarity - This is a suite of Perl modules that implements a number of semantic similarity measures. These algorithms use the UMLS-Interface module to access the UMLS to generate relatedness scores between concepts.

SYNOPSIS

use UMLS::Interface;
 
use UMLS::Similarity::lch;
use UMLS::Similarity::path;

my $umls = UMLS::Interface->new(); 
die "Unable to create UMLS::Interface object.\n" if(!$umls);
($errCode, $errString) = $umls->getError();
die "$errString\n" if($errCode);

my $lch = UMLS::Similarity::lch->new($umls);
die "Unable to create measure object.\n" if(!$lch);
  
my $path = UMLS::Similarity::path->new($umls);
die "Unable to create measure object.\n" if(!$path);

my $cui1 = "C0005767";
my $cui2 = "C0007634";

@ts1 = $umls->getTermList($cui1);
my $term1 = pop @ts1;

@ts2 = $umls->getTermList($cui2);
my $term2 = pop @ts2;

my $lvalue = $lch->getRelatedness($cui1, $cui2);
my $pvalue = $path->getRelatedness($cui1, $cui2);

print "The lch similarity between $cui1 ($term1) and $cui2 ($term2) is $lvalue\n";
print "The path similarity between $cui1 ($term1) and $cui2 ($term2) is $pvalue\n";

DESCRIPTION

This package consists of Perl modules along with supporting Perl programs that implement the semantic relatedness measures described by Leacock & Chodorow (1998) and a simple path based measure.

The Perl modules are designed as objects with methods that take as input two concepts. The semantic relatedness of these concepts is returned by these methods. A quantitative measure of the degree to which two word senses are related has wide ranging applications in numerous areas, such as word sense disambiguation, information retrieval, etc. For example, in order to determine which sense of a given word is being used in a particular context, the sense having the highest relatedness with its context word senses is most likely to be the sense being used. Similarly, in information retrieval, retrieving documents containing highly related concepts are more likely to have higher precision and recall values.

The following sections describe the organization of this software package and how to use it. A few typical examples are given to help clearly understand the usage of the modules and the supporting utilities.

CONTACT US

If you have any trouble installing and using UMLS-Similarity, 
please contact us via the users mailing list :
  
    umls-similarity@yahoogroups.com
   
You can join this group by going to:
  
    http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/umls-similarity/
   
You may also contact us directly if you prefer :
  
    Bridget T. McInnes: bthomson at cs.umn.edu 

    Ted Pedersen : tpederse at d.umn.edu

SEE ALSO

perl(1), UMLS::Interface

perl(1), UMLS::Similarity::lch(3), UMLS::Similarity::path(3), UMLS::Similarity::wup(3)

AUTHORS

Bridget T McInnes <bthomson at cs.umn.edu>
Siddharth Patwardhan <sidd at cs.utah.edu>
Serguei Pakhomov <pakh0002 at umn.edu>
Ted Pedersen <tpederse at d.umn.edu>

COPYRIGHT AND LICENSE

Copyright 2004-2009 by Bridget T McInnes, Siddharth Patwardhan, Serguei Pakhomov and Ted Pedersen

This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself.