- contents -- entities -- signals -- coreference -- relationships -- general guidelines -- recipe -- histopath -- radiology -

- previous -- next -

Entities

Examples

The description of annotations in future sections make use of the following examples:

  1. "This patient has had a lymph node biopsy which shows melanoma in his right groin. Five out of ten nodes were involved. It is clearly secondaries from the melanoma on his right second toe. Although his PET scan is normal he does need a groin dissection. We will perform a CT scan to look at the left pelvic side wall and I will review him together with Dr. X next week."
  2. "I have discussed her with x. We agreed to treat with DTIC, and then consider radiotherapy."
  3. "This 56 year old woman was admitted to x ward on the date above, with increasing facial pain. This was initially relieved by co-codamol"
  4. "There was no evidence of extra pelvic secondaries"

The entities

The following table describes the CLEF entities. These are CLEF's basic semantic units in the text. They denote things in the real world of the patient's care, such as diseases, symptoms and drugs. For each entity type, an informal description and an example are given.

Entity type Description Example
Condition Symptom, diagnosis, complication, conditions, problems, functions and processes, injury In example 1, there are two melanoma entities of type condition: one in the right groin, and one in the right second toe. The melanoma in the right groin has two mentions: "melanoma" and "it".
Intervention Action performed by doctor or other clinician targeted at a patient, Locus, or Condition with the objective of changing (the properties) of, or treating, a Condition. In example 1, there is one intervention entity, the dissection. In example 2, the radiotherapy is an intervention.
Investigation Interaction between doctor and patient or Locus aimed at measuring or studying, but not changing, some aspect of a Condition. Investigations have findings or interpretations, whereas Interventions usually do not. In example 1, there are three investigation entities: a biopsy, a PET scan and a CT scan.
Result The numeric or qualitative finding of an Investigation, excluding Condition In example 1, the PET scan has a result of "normal". Other examples include the numeric values of tests, such as "80mg".
Drug or device Usually a drug. Occasionaly, medical devices such as suture material and drains will also be mentioned in texts. These will also be annotated along with drugs. Example 3 contains a single drug entity, co-codamol.
Locus Anatomical structure or location, body substance, or physiologic function, typically the locus of a Condition. There are five loci entities in example 1: lymph node, the right groin, second toe, the groin that needs a dissection, and pelvic side wall. It is debatable as to whether the two groins are the same entity, although you could perhaps infer that the dissection would be on the groin that contains the melanoma.