Overview of the NCI Metathesaurus
The NCI Metathesaurus is intended to provide rich synonymy and is useful in mapping among the codes and terms used in various biomedical vocabularies. The NCI Metathesaurus is based on NLM's Unified Medical Language System Metathesaurus, supplemented with additional cancer-centric vocabulary. In contrast the NCI Thesaurus is the NCI reference vocabulary that provides the concepts used in caCORE and caBIG to establish data semantics.
NCI Metathesaurus is registered in the HL7 OID Registry as 2.16.840.1.113883.3.26.1.2 .
The NCI Metathesaurus is updated monthly. The monthly updates correspond to minor software releases. They contain new or modified concepts, spelling corrections and other minor changes.
EVS produces two or three "builds" of the NCI Metathesaurus each year. Each build is based on the most recent release of the UMLS Metathesaurus, supplemented with NCI-specific vocabulary sources.
In EVS, a vocabulary build corresponds roughly to a major release of a software product. Builds may contain wholly new sources; existing sources may be dropped or supplanted. The availability of new builds, and the differences between builds are announced on the NCI EVS list server.
In addition to the NCI Metathesaurus and the NCI Thesaurus, the EVS servers provide access to a variety of other vocabulary products such as SNOMED/CT, LOINC and VA/NDF.
Using the NCI Metathesaurus Wiki
This is the wiki home page for NCI Metathesaurus. caCORE developers may edit this page and any user may add a comment.
