Systematic feature evaluation for gene name recognition

In task 1A of the BioCreAtIvE evaluation, systems had to be devised that recognize words and phrases forming gene or protein names in natural language sentences. We approach this problem by building a word classification system based on a sliding window approach with a Support Vector Machine, combined with a pattern-based post-processing for the recognition of phrases. The performance of such a system crucially depends on the type of features chosen for consideration by the classification method, such as pre- or postfixes, character n-grams, patterns of capitalization, or classification of preceding or following words. We present a systematic approach to evaluate the performance of different feature sets based on recursive feature elimination, RFE. Based on a systematic reduction of the number of features used by the system, we can quantify the impact of different feature sets on the results of the word classification problem. This helps us to identify descriptive features, to learn a...

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2005
• Where: BMCBI
• Authors: Jörg Hakenberg, Steffen Bickel, Conrad Plake, Ulf Brefeld, Hagen Zahn, Lukas Faulstich, Ulf Leser, Tobias Scheffer
• Keywords: BioCreAtIvE Evaluation, BMCBI 2005, Gene, Word Classification