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Abstractor

Abstractor is a Rails engine gem for deriving discrete data points from narrative text via natural language processing (NLP). The gem includes a user interface to present abstracted data points for confirmation/revision by a curator.

Abstractor uses a Subject-Predicate-Object (SPO) or Entity-Attribute-Value (EAV) data model to represent data points abstracted from documents. Like other EAV or SPO data models, Abstractor supports the recording of arbitrarily many statements about a subject/entity.

Subject/Entity: the subject/entity is the thing being described. In Abstractor, the subject/entity is most often a clinical narrative document. For example, a pathology report or radiology exam report. The host application containing the Abstractor gem is expected to represent the subject/entity as a Rails model that exposes textual content as an instance method.

Predicate/Attribute: the predicate/attribute is the property of the thing being described. The predicate/attribute can be any trait or aspect of the subject/entity and expresses a relationship between the subject/entity and the object/value. In Abstractor this is most often a clinical observation or finding. For example, histology diagnosis in a pathology report or tumor response criteria in a radiology exam report.

Object/Value: the object/value is the fulfillment of the property in the thing being described. For example, glioblastoma for the histology diagnosis of a pathology report; complete response for the tumor response criteria of a radiology exam report.

The configuration of Abstractor normally begins with the setup of a predicate/attribute in the Abstraction Schema model.