Spatio-structural granularity of biological material entities

Background: With the continuously increasing demands on knowledge- and data-management that databases have to meet, ontologies and the theories of granularity they use become more and more important. Unfortunately, currently used theories and schemes of granularity unnecessarily limit the performance of ontologies due to two shortcomings: (i) they do not allow the integration of multiple granularity perspectives into one granularity framework; (ii) they are not applicable to cumulative-constitutively organized material entities, which cover most of the biomedical material entities. Results: The above mentioned shortcomings are responsible for the major inconsistencies in currently used spatiostructural granularity schemes. By using the Basic Formal Ontology (BFO) as a top-level ontology and Keet's general theory of granularity, a granularity framework is presented that is applicable to cumulative-constitutively organized material entities. It provides a scheme for granulating com...

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2010
• Where: BMCBI
• Authors: Lars Vogt
• Keywords: BMCBI 2010, Granularity, Granularity Framework, Material Entities