Ontology construction of traditional Chinese medicine diagnosis and treatment for myopia

Objective: To keep up with the progress of treatment for myopia in traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) through literature research, so as to determine data source of TCM diagnosis and treatment for myopia, from which entities are extracted for integration of relevant knowledge, and further formal expression and visualization of knowledge. Methods: Literature research and comparative analysis were used to determine the data source, and the 7-step method of constructing ontology was referred to for extraction of TCM diagnosis and treatment entities, which then was terminalized for development of classes and class hierarchy, and class properties, as well as creation of instances before consistency test of the ontology. Results: The ontology of TCM diagnosis and treatment for myopia includes 26 classes and 124 instances, 9 object properties, and 1 data property. Conclusion: The combination of ontology technology and TCM diagnosis and treatment knowledge of myopia contributes to the construction of a knowledge base of TCM diagnosis and treatment ontology for myopia, which realizes formal expression and visualization of relevant TCM knowledge, lays a foundation for the construction of TCM top-level ontology and ophthalmology ontology, and facilitates knowledge reusing and sharing.