Parts, locations, and holes — Formal reasoning about anatomical structures

Abstract

We propose an ontology engineering framework for the anatomy domain, focusing on mereotopological properties of parts, locations and empty spaces (holes). We develop and formally describe a basic ontology consisting of the mutually disjoint primitives solid object, hole and boundary. We embed the relations part-of and location-of into a parsimonious description logic (ALC) and emulate advanced reasoning across these relations-such as transitivity at the T-Box level-by taxonomic subsumption. Unlike common conceptualizations we do not distinguish between solids and the regions they occupy, as well as we allow solids to have holes as proper parts. Concrete examples from human anatomy are used to support our claims.