The Foundational Model of Anatomy Ontology (FMA) is a reference
ontology
Ontology is the philosophical study of existence, being. It is traditionally understood as the subdiscipline of metaphysics focused on the most general features of reality. As one of the most fundamental concepts, being encompasses all of realit ...
for the domain of
human anatomy
Human anatomy (gr. ἀνατομία, "dissection", from ἀνά, "up", and τέμνειν, "cut") is primarily the scientific study of the morphology of the human body. Anatomy is subdivided into gross anatomy and microscopic anatomy. Gross ...
.
It is a symbolic representation of the canonical, phenotypic structure of an
organism
An organism is any life, living thing that functions as an individual. Such a definition raises more problems than it solves, not least because the concept of an individual is also difficult. Many criteria, few of them widely accepted, have be ...
; a spatial-structural ontology of anatomical entities and relations which form the physical organization of an organism at all salient levels of
granularity
Granularity (also called graininess) is the degree to which a material or system is composed of distinguishable pieces, "granules" or "grains" (metaphorically).
It can either refer to the extent to which a larger entity is subdivided, or the ...
.
FMA is developed and maintained by the Structural Informatics Group at the
University of Washington
The University of Washington (UW and informally U-Dub or U Dub) is a public research university in Seattle, Washington, United States. Founded in 1861, the University of Washington is one of the oldest universities on the West Coast of the Uni ...
.
Description
FMA ontology contains approximately 75,000 classes and over 120,000 terms, over 2.1 million relationship instances from over 168 relationship types.
About FMA – Contents
– The Foundational Model of Anatomy (retrieved 2012-11-06).
See also
* Terminologia Anatomica
''Terminologia Anatomica'' (commonly abbreviated TA) is the international standard for human anatomy, human anatomical terminology. It is developed by the Federative International Programme on Anatomical Terminology (FIPAT) a program of the Inter ...
* Anatomography
References
External links
The Foundational Model of Anatomy OntologyFMA Ontology Browser
{{Semantic Web
Bioinformatics
Ontology (information science)
Anatomical terminology