This document discusses automatic text simplification in the biomedical domain. It covers detecting difficulties in biomedical texts, acquiring paraphrases for technical terms, and applying these techniques to simplify texts for non-specialized readers. The detection of difficulties involves identifying complex words and sentences using measures of readability, eye tracking analysis, and natural language processing. Acquiring paraphrases involves gathering simpler synonyms and definitions of technical terms from resources like Wikipedia and distributional semantic models. The overall goal is to make health information more understandable for patients and the public.

1. Context Difficulty Paraphrases Conclusion
Automatic text simplification in biomedical
domain
Natalia Grabar
STL CNRS UMR8163, France
Grammarly, Kyiv, Ukraine: 21/08/2018
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2. Context Difficulty Paraphrases Conclusion
Background
Lviv University
Languages, Linguistics
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3. Context Difficulty Paraphrases Conclusion
Background
Lviv University Master, PhD
INaLCO, Universit´e Paris 6
Languages, Linguistics NLP, Medical area, Terminology
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4. Context Difficulty Paraphrases Conclusion
Background
Lviv University Master, PhD
INaLCO, Universit´e Paris 6
Languages, Linguistics NLP, Medical area, Terminology
PostDoc, AHU
Inserm, Fondation HON Geneva
Information retrieval, Quality of information
Discourse analysis, Typology
Information for non-specialized users
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5. Context Difficulty Paraphrases Conclusion
Background
Lviv University Master, PhD
INaLCO, Universit´e Paris 6
Languages, Linguistics NLP, Medical area, Terminology
Acquisition of lexical resources
PostDoc, AHU Researcher
Inserm, Fondation HON Geneva CNRS
Information retrieval, Quality of information Information for non-specialized users
Discourse analysis, Typology Semantic annotation, Information extraction
Information for non-specialized users
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6. Context Difficulty Paraphrases Conclusion
Automatic text simplification in biomedical domain
work in French
1 Context
2 Detection of difficulties
3 Acquisition of paraphrases
4 Conclusion
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7. Context Difficulty Paraphrases Conclusion
Context
Evolution of the biomedical domain:
specific knowledge and terms
Different kinds of users:
medical staff, pharmacists, students, patients...
various levels of specialization
Patients: quality of information, understanding
technicity and understanding of health information
⇒ Close relation with health and well-being of people
(AMA, 1999; Berland et al., 2001; McCray, 2005; Tran et al.,
2009)
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8. Context Difficulty Paraphrases Conclusion
Readability of health documents
Health information must be: readable, understandable, usable
In different situations:
follow up of treatments
make decisions (chronical disorders)
communicate with medical doctors
make the healthcare process successful
Real difficulty:
understand the steps of the correct intake of drugs (Patel
et al., 2002)
within 2,600 US patients (2 hospitals):
26% to 60% cannot understand instructions on drug intake,
informed consensus, health brochures (Williams et al., 1995)
Documents, health websites designed for patients:
often show high technicity (Berland et al., 2001)
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9. Context Difficulty Paraphrases Conclusion
Objective
Make health documents and medical terms better
understandable by patients:
detect reading difficulties
propose common paraphrases for technical terms
Diagnosis
of text
modelref. ref. model res. rules
Detection of
difficult words
Simplification
/decoration
difficult
Text Simplified text
Interdisciplinary research:
linguistics, psychology, terminology, NLP...
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10. Context Difficulty Paraphrases Conclusion
Detection of difficulties
1 Context
2 Detection of difficulties
3 Acquisition of paraphrases
4 Conclusion
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11. Context Difficulty Paraphrases Conclusion
Detection of difficulties (documents)
Existing work
Text typology
Diagnosis of the text readability
Classical measures: Flesch (Flesch, 1948), Fog (Gunning,
1973)...
Computational measures:
classical measures and medical vocabulary (Kokkinakis &
Toporowska Gronostaj, 2006)
n-grams of characters (Poprat et al., 2006)
manual weighting of words (Zheng et al., 2002)
morphology (Chmielik & Grabar, 2009)
stylistic criteria (Grabar et al., 2007)
discursive criteria (Goeuriot et al., 2007)
various combinations (Wang, 2006; Zeng-Treiler et al., 2007;
Goeuriot et al., 2007; Leroy et al., 2008)
...
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12. Context Difficulty Paraphrases Conclusion
Detection of difficulties (documents)
Results (Chmielik & Grabar, 2009; Chmielik & Grabar, 2011)
0
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0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1
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0.2
0.4
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lexical features morphological features
Decision trees C4.5 (Quinlan, 1993)
10-fold cross-validation
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13. Context Difficulty Paraphrases Conclusion
Detection of difficulties (words)
Existing work
Facilitators: hiphen (Bertram et al., 2011), space (Frisson
et al., 2008), morphological closeness (L¨uttmann et al., 2011),
primes (Bozic et al., 2007; Beyersmann et al., 2012), pictures
(Dohmes et al., 2004; Koester & Schiller, 2011), etc.
Morphological head (Jarema et al., 1999; Libben et al., 2003)
NLP: challenges (Specia et al., 2012):
for a short text and a given word, several possible substitutions
which satisfy the context are proposed
→ sort the substitutions according to their simplicity
Descriptors:
Google n-grams, WordNet, length of words, number syllables,
mutual information, frequency...
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14. Context Difficulty Paraphrases Conclusion
Detection of difficulties
Psychology: eye-tracking (Grabar et al., 2018)
Eye-tracking:
recording eye movements when reading
Several indicators:
fixations: periods during which the eyes are stable (visual
information is analyzed)
saccades: rapid movements of eyes to move from one point to
another
regressions: backward movements
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15. Context Difficulty Paraphrases Conclusion
Detection of difficulties: Eye-tracking
text1
EXAMEN : ECHOGRAPHIE DES MAINS ET DES PIEDS
MOTIF : Bilan d’arthralgies
Mains : On ne visualise pas de t´enosynovite, ou d’arthrosynovite.
Avant-pieds : On retrouve des remaniements int´eressant les premi`eres
m´etatarsophalangiennes en rapport avec des ant´ec´edents de chirurgie d’Hallux
valgus.
Absence d’arthrosynovite au niveau des articulations m´etatarsophalangiennes.
EXAMEN : ECHOGRAPHIE DES MAINS ET DES PIEDS
MOTIF : Bilan de douleurs articulaires
Mains : On ne visualise pas d’inflammation des tendons, ni de la membrane
articulaire.
Avant-pieds : On retrouve des remaniements int´eressants sur les premi`eres
articulations des pieds en rapport avec les ant´ec´edents de la chirurgie de la
d´eformation du pied.
Absence d’inflammation de la membrane au niveau des articulations du pied.
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16. Context Difficulty Paraphrases Conclusion
Detection of difficulties: Eye-tracking
text2
Cette patiente avait constitu´e un infarctus du myocarde ant´erieur en novembre
2010, pour lequel avait ´et´e r´ealis´ee une angioplastie de l’IVA moyenne avec
implantation d’un stent non actif Vision de 2.75 mm x 18 mm, un compl´ement
par angioplastie au ballon seul en aval. Une endoproth`ese avait ´egalement ´et´e
implant´ee au niveau de la circonflexe proximale, avec un stent Vision 2.5 x 18
mm. La fraction d’´ejection ´etait ´evalu´ee entre 35 et 40 %.
Nous l’avions revue r´ecemment, en insuffisance cardiaque, avec plusieurs autres
probl`emes :
- une an´emie microcytaire inexpliqu´ee,
- un d´es´equilibre important de son diab`ete pour lequel elle a ´et´e, entre temps,
prise en charge par nos confr`eres diab´etologues.
Cette patiente avait pr´esent´e une crise cardiaque en novembre 2010, pour
laquelle avait ´et´e r´ealis´ee une intervention chirurgicale de l’art`ere cardiaque avec
implantation d’un stent non actif. Un autre stent avait ´egalement ´et´e implant´e
au niveau d’une autre art`ere. La fraction d’´ejection observ´ee ´etait basse.
Nous l’avions revue r´ecemment, en insuffisance cardiaque, avec plusieurs autres
probl`emes :
- une an´emie inexpliqu´ee,
- un d´es´equilibre important de son diab`ete pour lequel elle a ´et´e, entre temps,13/45 Automatic text simplification in biomedical domain Natalia Grabar

17. Context Difficulty Paraphrases Conclusion
Detection of difficulties: Eye-tracking
Results on text1
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18. Context Difficulty Paraphrases Conclusion
Detection of difficulties: Eye-tracking
Results on text2
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19. Context Difficulty Paraphrases Conclusion
Detection of difficulties: Eye-tracking
Results
text1 text2
O S SD p ddl t-test O S SD p ddl t-test
TRN 60,55 63,63 -3,08 0,23 45,00 1,22 62,73 59,67 3,06 0,22 45,00 1,24
CRL 58,88 62,06 -3,19 0,22 45,00 1,25 61,04 57,84 3,20 0,21 45,00 1,29
DPF 227,41 215,75 11,66 0,11 45,00 1,65 214,73 214,69 0,04 0,50 45,00 0,68
NTF 587,61 370,48 217,14 0,00 45,00 7,38 395,71 372,22 23,49 0,16 45,00 1,43
AMP 3,50 3,80 -0,30 0,02 45,00 2,44 3,33 3,82 -0,49 0,00 45,00 5,38
REG 27,26 21,21 6,06 0,05 45,00 2,05 21,47 19,30 2,18 0,24 45,00 1,18
QCM 1304,35 869,57 434,78 0,02 21,00 2,08 602,77 538,95 63,82 0,00 21,00 2,08
TRN, CRL: stable reading
DPF: no anticipation
NTF, AMP, REG: better significance on text1
QCM: better understanding with simplified versions
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20. Context Difficulty Paraphrases Conclusion
Detection of difficulties: NLP
(Grabar et al., 2014)
Medical words from Snomed International (Cˆot´e et al., 1993)
29,641 lemmatized words
Manually annotated:
by 3 independent annotators:
categories:
1 I can understand
2 I am not sure
3 I cannot understand
inter-annotator agreement: Cohen’s Kappa 0.736
NLP task: supervised categorization
automatically reproduce the manual annotations: F=0.90
24 descriptors:
syntactic and morphological information, reference lexica,
frequency, length, initial and final substrings, readability
scores...
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21. Context Difficulty Paraphrases Conclusion
Detection of difficulties: NLP
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22. Context Difficulty Paraphrases Conclusion
Detection of difficulties
Typology
abbreviations (OG, VG, PAPS, j, bat, cp);
proper names (Gougerot, Sj¨ogren, Bentall, Glasgow, Babinski,
Barthel, Cockcroft);
drug names;
neoclassical compounds - disorders, procedures, treatments
(pseudoh´emophilie, scl´erodermie, hydrolase, tympanectomie,
arthrod`ese, synesth´esie);
borrowings from Latin or English;
human anatomy (cloacal, pubovaginal, nasopharyng´e, mitral,
antre, inguinal, strontium, ´eryth`eme, maxillo-facial,
m´esent`ere);
lab test results.
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23. Context Difficulty Paraphrases Conclusion
Acquisition of paraphrases
1 Contexte
2 Detection of difficulties
3 Acquisition of paraphrases
4 Conclusion
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24. Context Difficulty Paraphrases Conclusion
Acquisition of paraphrases
Existing work: general language
Revision of Simple Wikipedia articles (Yatskar et al., 2010):
probabilistic models and filters
between 1,079 and 2,970 pairs:
{stands for, is the same as}, {indigenous, native}
precision: 17% to 86%;
Methods from machine translation (Zhu et al., 2010; Wubben
et al., 2012):
parallel and aligned corpora (Wikipedia/Simple Wikipedia)
Distributional methods (Glavas & Stajner, 2015; Kim et al.,
2016):
monolingual corpora
vectors can contain equivalents easier to understand
filtering
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25. Context Difficulty Paraphrases Conclusion
Acquisition of paraphrases
Existing work: medical language
Automatic translator of medical terms to general language
(McCray et al., 1999):
MEDLINEplus (brochures)
Consumer Health Vocabulary (CHV) (Zeng & Tse, 2006)
collaborative approach
Morpho-syntactic variants (Del´eger & Zweigenbaum, 2008;
Cartoni & Del´eger, 2011):
{consommation r´eguli`ere, consommer de fa¸con r´eguli`ere}
{gˆene `a la lecture, empˆeche de lire}
Social media specificities (Tapi Nzali et al., 2015):
misspellings
{cirrhose, cyrose}, {m´etastase, metastase}
reduced words
{oncologue, onco}, {chimioth´erapie, chimio}
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26. Context Difficulty Paraphrases Conclusion
Acquisition of paraphrases
Definitions (Antoine & Grabar, 2017)
Reformulations (Antoine & Grabar, 2017)
Morphological composition (Grabar & Hamon, 2014; Grabar
& Hamon, 2016)
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27. Context Difficulty Paraphrases Conclusion
Definitions
Methods
Definition: structure with two elements:
definiendum (term to define) and definiens (the definition)
Myocarde est le tissu musculaire du coeur
Use of four patterns (P´ery-Woodley & Rebeyrolle, 1998)
d´esigne (means)
est un (is a)
est appel´e (called as)
peut ˆetre d´efini comme (can be defined as)
...with inflectional variants
Trigger: term
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28. Context Difficulty Paraphrases Conclusion
Definitions
Results
Extraction:
2,037 definitions
1,286 unique terms
Evaluation:
strict precision: 52.5%
correct definitions: 849
weak precision: 68%
correct and possibly correct definitions: 1,028
Types of terms:
compound terms:
hypoglyc´emie, acidoc´etose, angiographie, hypokali´emie,
affixed terms:
curetage, capsulite, arthrose, glaucome, durillon, pr´e-diab`ete,
non-constructed terms:
cataracte, imp´etigo, zona
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29. Context Difficulty Paraphrases Conclusion
Definitions
Results
L’hypoglyc´emie est un manque de sucre dans l’organisme
Une septic´emie est un empoisonnement du sang du `a un
microbe
Le curetage est un nettoyage en profondeur d’une gencive
inflamm´ee
Pour un ˆetre humain adulte, une hypoglyc´emie est une
glyc´emie inf´erieure `a 0,8 g/L
Les signes classiques annonciateurs de l’hypoglyc´emie sont des
sueurs, pˆaleur, palpitations, fringales en particulier
L’imp´etigo est une infection cutan´ee, qui provoque des
pustules qui d´eg´en`erent en croˆutes jaunˆatres, l’imp´etigo est
due `a...
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30. Context Difficulty Paraphrases Conclusion
Definitions
Results
Readability (p´ericarde):
+ La couche ext´erieure du cœur est appel´ee p´ericarde.
∼ Le p´ericarde est un sac `a double paroi contenant le cœur et les
racines des gros vaisseaux sanguins.
− Le p´ericarde est un organe de glissement, form´e de deux
feuillets limitant une cavit´e virtuelle, la cavit´e p´ericardique, qui
permet les mouvements cardiaques.
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31. Context Difficulty Paraphrases Conclusion
Reformulations
Motivation
Reformulation: say differently (Le Bot et al., 2008)
Occurrence of reformulations:
indicates presence of difficult words/terms
provides triggers for the extraction
Exploit reliable data:
health fora with moderators
Wikipedia
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32. Context Difficulty Paraphrases Conclusion
Reformulations
Methods
concept marker reformulation
v´esiculaire, c’est-`a-dire, venant de la v´esicule biliaire
3 markers :
c’est-`a-dire (I mean)
autrement dit ; Autrement dit (in other words)
encore appel´e(e)(s) (also called)
Pre-processing
POS-tagging and syntactic analysis by Cordial (Laurent et al.,
2009)
Trigger: markers
Extraction of concept and of reformulation:
syntactic information
boundaries: syntagms or propositions
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33. Context Difficulty Paraphrases Conclusion
Reformulations
form lemma POS POSMT GS type GS Prop
Vous vous PPER2P Pp2.pn 1 S 1
ne ne ADV Rpn 3—1 S 1
devez devoir VINDP2P Vmip2p 3 V 1
pas pas ADV Rgn 3 Q 1
employer employer VINF Vmn – 5 D 2
de de PREP Sp 7 D 2
savons savon NCMP Ncmp 7 D 2
ou ou COO Cc 7 F 2
des de le DETDPIG Da-.p-i 10—7 F 2
laits lait NCMP Ncmp 10—7 F 2
sophistiqu´es sophistiqu´e ADJMP Afpmp 10—7 F 2
, , PCTFAIB Ypw - - 2
c’ ce PDS Pd-..- 13 N 2
est est ADV Rgp - p 2
-`a `a PREP Sp 16 F 2
-dire dire VINF Vmn– 16 F 2
contenant contenant NCMS Ncms 17 D 2
plusieurs plusieurs ADJIND Dt-.p- 19 D 2
composants composant NCMP Ncmp 19 D 2
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34. Context Difficulty Paraphrases Conclusion
Reformulations
form lemma POS POSMT GS type GS Prop
Vous vous PPER2P Pp2.pn 1 S 1
ne ne ADV Rpn 3—1 S 1
devez devoir VINDP2P Vmip2p 3 V 1
pas pas ADV Rgn 3 Q 1
employer employer VINF Vmn – 5 D 2
de de PREP Sp 7 D 2
savons savon NCMP Ncmp 7 D 2
ou ou COO Cc 7 F 2
des de le DETDPIG Da-.p-i 10—7 F 2
laits lait NCMP Ncmp 10—7 F 2
sophistiqu´es sophistiqu´e ADJMP Afpmp 10—7 F 2
, , PCTFAIB Ypw - - 2
c’ ce PDS Pd-..- 13 N 2
est est ADV Rgp - p 2
-`a `a PREP Sp 16 F 2
-dire dire VINF Vmn– 16 F 2
contenant contenant NCMS Ncms 17 D 2
plusieurs plusieurs ADJIND Dt-.p- 19 D 2
composants composant NCMP Ncmp 19 D 2
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35. Context Difficulty Paraphrases Conclusion
Reformulations
form lemma POS POSMT GS type GS Prop
Vous vous PPER2P Pp2.pn 1 S 1
ne ne ADV Rpn 3—1 S 1
devez devoir VINDP2P Vmip2p 3 V 1
pas pas ADV Rgn 3 Q 1
employer employer VINF Vmn – 5 D 2
de de PREP Sp 7 D 2
savons savon NCMP Ncmp 7 D 2
ou ou COO Cc 7 F 2
des de le DETDPIG Da-.p-i 10—7 F 2
laits lait NCMP Ncmp 10—7 F 2
sophistiqu´es sophistiqu´e ADJMP Afpmp 10—7 F 2
, , PCTFAIB Ypw - - 2
c’ ce PDS Pd-..- 13 N 2
est est ADV Rgp - p 2
-`a `a PREP Sp 16 F 2
-dire dire VINF Vmn– 16 F 2
contenant contenant NCMS Ncms 17 D 2
plusieurs plusieurs ADJIND Dt-.p- 19 D 2
composants composant NCMP Ncmp 19 D 2
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36. Context Difficulty Paraphrases Conclusion
Reformulations
Evaluation
Dev. Test P R F
nb occ. 96 2 757 exact 0.24 0.24 0.24
nb types 96 2 710 inexact 0.98 0.98 0.98
Difficulties:
detection of boundaries:
en c’est-`a-dire au contact du sang circulant
une toxi-infection, c’est-`a-dire, qu’ elle peut
semantics:
en 10 ans autrement dit sur 64 millions de personnes
un objectif c’est-`a-dire une finalit´e
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37. Context Difficulty Paraphrases Conclusion
Reformulations
Results
des canaux galactophores c’est-`a-dire s´ecr`etent le lait
erratiques c’est-`a-dire qu’ils changent de d’aspect et d’endroit
par une lithiase c’est-`a-dire un caillou
clivage du moi c’est-`a-dire comme une opposition entre le moi
et la r´ealit´e
au gr´e de la d´esint´egration radioactive du 18 F c’est-`a-dire
avec une demi-vie d’environ
un trouble de l’identit´e sexuelle c’est-`a-dire qu’ils s’identifient
`a un genre ne correspondant pas `a leur sexe biologique
une enzyme prot´eolytique c’est-`a-dire dig`ere les prot´eines
comme le fait le suc pancr´eatique
celle de troubles fonctionnels intestinaux encore appel´es
colopathie fonctionnelle
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38. Context Difficulty Paraphrases Conclusion
Morphological composition
Morphological
analysis of components
TranslationPOS−tagging
Medical
terms
Corpus
POS−tagging Syntactic
analysis
Evaluation
Alignment
Processing of terms
myocarde myocarde/Nom
[[[myo N*] [carde N*] NOM] ique ADJ]
myo=muscle, carde=coeur
Processing of corpus
Les causes de tachycardie ventriculaire sont superposables `a celles des
extrasystoles ventriculaires: infarctus du myocarde, insuffisance cardiaque,
hypertrophie du muscle du cœur et prolapsus de la valve mitrale.
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39. Context Difficulty Paraphrases Conclusion
Morphological composition
Morphological
analysis of components
TranslationPOS−tagging
Medical
terms
Corpus
POS−tagging Syntactic
analysis
Evaluation
Alignment
Processing of terms
myocarde myocarde/Nom
[[[myo N*] [carde N*] NOM] ique ADJ]
myo=muscle, carde=coeur
Processing of corpus
Les causes de tachycardie ventriculaire sont superposables `a celles des
extrasystoles ventriculaires: infarctus du myocarde, insuffisance cardiaque,
[hypertrophie du [muscle du cœur]] et prolapsus de la valve mitrale.
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40. Context Difficulty Paraphrases Conclusion
Morphological composition
Results
Alignment syntagm/term (percentage of alignment):
E1: full term and syntagm:
{myo pathie, maladie du muscle}
E2: full term, partial syntagm:
{myo pathie, maladie du muscle cardiaque}
E3: partial term, full syntagm:
{myopathie, la maladie}
E4: partial term and syntagm:
{myopathie, l’ origine de la maladie}
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41. Context Difficulty Paraphrases Conclusion
Morphological composition
Evaluation
Nb of unigrams bigrams trigrams
b l s b l s b l s
correct paraphrases 549 785 644 378 517 461 195 290 257
poss. correct 39 32 67 22 45 75 10 19 41
processing of terms 47 60 44 28 28 46 9 10 26
incorrect paraphrases 33 146 296 64 80 380 25 39 148
Pstrict 82 77 61 77 77 48 82 81 55
Pweak 88 80 68 81 84 40 86 86 63
%incorrect 5 14 28 13 12 39 11 11 31
Evaluation:
strict precision 82 to 55%
weak precision 86 to 40%
error rate 5 to 39%
Resources
without: the best precision
morphology: good precision
synonymy: low precision
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42. Context Difficulty Paraphrases Conclusion
Morphological composition
Morphological analysis
Ambigous analysis
[post [[uro N*] [graphie N*] NOM] NOM]
[[posturo N*] [graphie N*] NOM]
Incorrect analysis
sanglot: lot and sang
exotique: externe and oreille
divin: deux and vin (deux litres de vin)
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43. Context Difficulty Paraphrases Conclusion
Morphological composition
Extraction of paraphrases and their evaluation
Correct paraphrases
raw
{podalgie, douleur du pied}
{mastite, inflammation du sein}
{cystoprostatectomie, ablation de la vessie et de la prostate}
Morphology
{desmorrhexie, rupture des ligaments} (ligament→ligaments)
{bronchite, inflammation des bronches/inflammation
bronchique} (bronche→bronches, bronche→bronchique)
{dentalgie, douleurs dentaires} (dents→dentaires)
Synonymy
{aclasie, absence de fracture} (cassure→fracture)
{enterectomie, r´esection des intestins} (ablation→r´esection)
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44. Context Difficulty Paraphrases Conclusion
Morphological composition
Extraction of paraphrases and their evaluation
Semantic relations between components:
well managed by data from corpora
errors: coordination/subordination
hematospermie: le sang ou le sperme, instead of
→ le sang dans le sperme
Non-compositional terms:
ost´eodermie: peau and os, instead of
→ une structure d’´ecailles, de plaques osseuses ou d’autres
compositions dans les couches dermiques de la peau, comme
chez les l´ezards ou dinosaures
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45. Context Difficulty Paraphrases Conclusion
Comparison with existing work
term type nb. para precision
(Zeng et al., 2006) all CHV
(Elhadad & Sutaria, 2007) all 152 0.58
(Del´eger & Zweigenbaum, 2008) m-synt. 65, 82 0.67, 0.60
(Cartoni & Del´eger, 2011) m-synt. 109 0.66
definitions all 1,028 0.52, 0.68
morphology compounds 1,128 0.76, 0.86
abbreviations abbr. 42, 8,106 0.74/0.94
reformulation all 96, 2,710 0.24/0.98
parentheses all 305, 92,971 0.23/0.68
morpho-syntactic:
{consommation r´eguli`ere, consommer de fa¸con r´eguli`ere}
comparable performance, better coverage
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46. Context Difficulty Paraphrases Conclusion
Comparison with existing work
D´eriF (Namer, 2003):
gloss in formal language for every analyzed word
our method: coverage depends on content of corpora
myocarde:
”(Partie de – Type particulier de) coeur en rapport avec le(s)
muscle”
muscle du coeur
desmorrhexie:
”rupture (du – li´ee au) ligament”
rupture des ligaments
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47. Context Difficulty Paraphrases Conclusion
Conclusion
Detection of difficulties
in reading and understanding
Acquisition of resources
for explaining technical terms
Methods dedicated to different kinds of linguistic phenomena
paraphrases, reformulations...
Exploitation of general language corpora
Complementary methods
Interesting and exploitable results
Work in French
Diagnosis
of text
modelref. ref. model res. rules
Detection of
difficult words
Simplification
/decoration
difficult
Text Simplified text
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48. Context Difficulty Paraphrases Conclusion
Future work
Increase the coverage of paraphrases and reformulations:
more corpora
comparables (Cochrane, patient package inserts, Wiki/Viki)
monolingual
more suppletive resources
other methods for extracting the paraphrases
Alignment with medical terminologies
Distribution of the resource
Other languages
Lexical simplification of medical texts
ANR project CLEAR (Communication, Literacy, Education,
Accessibility, Readability)
Diagnosis
of text
modelref. ref. model res. rules
Detection of
difficult words
Simplification
/decoration
difficult
Text Simplified text
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49. Context Difficulty Paraphrases Conclusion
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