Evidence map›Paper›PMID 36399376›Full record

ArticleJMIR formative research2022

Extraction and Quantification of Words Representing Degrees of Diseases: Combining the Fuzzy C-Means Method and Gaussian Membership.

Feng Han, ZiHeng Zhang, Hongjian Zhang, Jun Nakaya, Kohsuke Kudo, Katsuhiko Ogasawara

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Article in JMIR formative research, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.

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6 authors.

Feng HanGraduate School of Medicine, Hokkaido University, Sapporo, Japan.ORCID https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6664-0516
ZiHeng ZhangGraduate School of Medicine, Hokkaido University, Sapporo, Japan.ORCID https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5480-9436
Hongjian ZhangGraduate School of Health Sciences, Medical Management and Informatics, Hokkaido University, Sapporo, Japan.ORCID https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1322-6634
Jun NakayaDivision of Advanced Diagnostic Imaging Development, Graduate School of Medicine, Hokkaido University, Sapporo, Japan.ORCID https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9711-532X
Kohsuke KudoDepartment of Diagnostic Imaging, Faculty of Medicine, Hokkaido University, Sapporo, Japan.ORCID https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5351-9242
Katsuhiko OgasawaraGraduate School of Health Sciences, Medical Management and Informatics, Hokkaido University, Sapporo, Japan.ORCID https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5474-7861

Funding

No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.

6 · The paper itself

Abstract

backgroundDue to the development of medical data, a large amount of clinical data has been generated. These unstructured data contain substantial information. Extracting useful knowledge from this data and making scientific decisions for diagnosing and treating diseases have become increasingly necessary. Unstructured data, such as in the Marketplace for Medical Information in Intensive Care III (MIMIC-III) data set, contain several ambiguous words that demonstrate the subjectivity of doctors, such as descriptions of patient symptoms. These data could be used to further improve the accuracy of medical diagnostic system assessments. To the best of our knowledge, there is currently no method for extracting subjective words that express the extent of these symptoms (hereinafter, "degree words").

objectiveTherefore, we propose using the fuzzy c-means (FCM) method and Gaussian membership to quantify the degree words in the clinical medical data set MIMIC-III.

methodsFirst, we preprocessed the 381,091 radiology reports collected in MIMIC-III, and then we used the FCM method to extract degree words from unstructured text. Thereafter, we used the Gaussian membership method to quantify the extracted degree words, which transform the fuzzy words extracted from the medical text into computer-recognizable numbers.

resultsThe results showed that the digitization of ambiguous words in medical texts is feasible. The words representing each degree of each disease had a range of corresponding values. Examples of membership medians were 2.971 (atelectasis), 3.121 (pneumonia), 2.899 (pneumothorax), 3.051 (pulmonary edema), and 2.435 (pulmonary embolus). Additionally, all extracted words contained the same subjective words (low, high, etc), which allows for an objective evaluation method. Furthermore, we will verify the specific impact of the quantification results of ambiguous words such as symptom words and degree words on the use of medical texts in subsequent studies. These same ambiguous words may be used as a new set of feature values to represent the disorders.

conclusionsThis study proposes an innovative method for handling subjective words. We used the FCM method to extract the subjective degree words in the English-interpreted report of the MIMIC-III and then used the Gaussian functions to quantify the subjective degree words. In this method, words containing subjectivity in unstructured texts can be automatically processed and transformed into numerical ranges by digital processing. It was concluded that the digitization of ambiguous words in medical texts is feasible.

Indexed as

algorithmclusterdata miningdiagnosisdiagnosticdocumentationEHRextractionfree textfuzzificationfuzzyfuzzy c-meansGaussmachine learningmedical reportmedical textquantificationradiologysupport systemtext miningunstructuredword quantification

Identifiers

PMID36399376
PMCPMC9719062

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