Foundational Model of Anatomy
The Foundational Model of Anatomy is a computational source of knowledge for bioinformatics; it deals with the representation of the entities and relationships necessary for the symbolic modeling of the structure of the human body. In particular, FMA is a formalism that represents the totality of our exact knowledge of the human anatomy as an ontology.
The FMA contains around 75,000 classes and over 125,000 terms; Over 2.1 million relation instances from over 168 relation types connect the classes of the FMA to a coherent symbolic model. The FMA is thus one of the largest computer-based knowledge resources in biomedicine.
Components
Anatomical Taxonomy (At)
The most comprehensive component of the FMA is the anatomical taxonomy (At) . The dominant class in At is anatomical structure . Anatomical structures contain all structures that arise through regular gene expression: biological macromolecules, cells and their components, tissues, organs and parts of organs as well as organ systems and body regions. Macroscopic anatomical structures are represented most comprehensively, whereas biological molecules are primarily included to illustrate the structural continuum from large body parts such as the thorax to biological macromolecules such as myosin.
In addition to the anatomical taxonomy, three other components play an essential role in the FMA:
Anatomical-structural abstraction (ASA)
Specifies the part-whole and spatial relationships that exist between entities from the at.
Anatomical Transformation Abstraction (ATA)
Describes the morphological transformations of entities from the At during prenatal development and the postnatal life cycle.
Meta knowledge (Mk)
Describes the principles, rules and definitions regarding the classes and relations of the three other components.
In summary, the Foundational Model of Anatomy Ontology can be represented by the following abstraction: FMA = (At, ASA, ATA, Mk).