In the past several years, various ontologies and terminologies such as the Gene Ontology have been developed to enable interoperability across multiple diverse medical information systems. They provide a standard way of representing terms and concepts thereby supporting easy transmission and interpretation of data for various applications. However, with their growing utilization, not only has the number of available ontologies increased considerably, but they are also becoming larger and more complex to manage. Toward this end, a growing body of work is emerging in the area of modular ontologies where the emphasis is on either extracting and managing "modules" of an ontology relevant to a particular application scenario (ontology decomposition) or developing them independently and integrating into a larger ontology (ontology composition). In this paper, we investigate state-of-the-art approaches in modular ontologies focusing on techniques that are based on rigorous logical formalisms as well as well-studied graph theories. We analyze and compare how such approaches can be leveraged in developing tools and applications in the biomedical domain. We conclude by highlighting some of the limitations of the modular ontology formalisms and put forward additional requirements to steer their future development.

中文翻译：

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模块化本体技术及其在生物医学领域的应用综述。

在过去几年中，已经开发了各种本体和术语，例如基因本体，以实现跨多个不同医疗信息系统的互操作性。它们提供了表示术语和概念的标准方式，从而支持各种应用程序的数据的轻松传输和解释。然而，随着它们利用率的不断提高，不仅可用本体的数量显着增加，而且它们也变得越来越大，管理起来也越来越复杂。为此，在模块化本体领域出现了越来越多的工作，重点是提取和管理“模块” 与特定应用场景相关的本体（本体分解）或独立开发它们并集成到更大的本体中（本体组合）。在本文中，我们研究了模块化本体中最先进的方法，重点是基于严格的逻辑形式主义和经过充分研究的图论的技术。我们分析和比较了如何利用这些方法来开发生物医学领域的工具和应用程序。最后，我们强调了模块化本体形式主义的一些局限性，并提出了指导其未来发展的额外要求。我们分析和比较了如何利用这些方法来开发生物医学领域的工具和应用程序。最后，我们强调了模块化本体形式主义的一些局限性，并提出了指导其未来发展的额外要求。我们分析和比较了如何利用这些方法来开发生物医学领域的工具和应用程序。最后，我们强调了模块化本体形式主义的一些局限性，并提出了指导其未来发展的额外要求。