Cognitive Science Branch

Natural Language Systems Program

The Natural Language Systems (NLS) research team investigates the contributions that natural language processing techniques can make to the task of mediating between the language of users and the language of online biomedical information resources. The successful integration of these techniques with other information retrieval strategies has the potential of contributing to the resolution of some of the problems underlying biomedical information management.

The focus of NLS work is the development of SPECIALIST, an experimental natural language processing system for the biomedical domain. The SPECIALIST system includes several modules based on the major components of natural language: the lexicon, morphology, syntax, and semantics. The lexicon and morphological component are concerned with the structure of words and the rules of word formation. The syntactic component treats the constituent structure of phrases and sentences, while the semantic component seeks to extract biomedical content from text.

All components of the SPECIALIST system rely heavily on the linguistic and domain knowledge in the Unified Medical Language System (UMLS) knowledge sources (the SPECIALIST Lexicon, the Metathesaurus, and the Semantic Network).

An ongoing and fundamental aspect of NLS research is the evaluation of the effectiveness of natural language processing in the context of information management. NLS staff regularly conduct experiments using the SPECIALIST system and UMLS knowledge sources to assess incremental improvements in information management effectiveness.

Last updated: Tuesday, 20-Nov-2001 14:33:36 EST
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This page: http://lhncbc.nlm.nih.gov/cgsb/research/nls/


Lister Hill National Center for Biomedical Communications
U.S. National Library of Medicine, 8600 Rockville Pike, Bethesda, MD 20894
National Institutes of Health, Department of Health & Human Services
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