Bioinformatics as a discipline has come of age, and there are now numerous databases and tools that are widely used by researchers in the biomedical field. However, successful development of future bioinformatics applications will depend on an appropriately formalised representation of domain knowledge.

Bioinformatics as a discipline has come of age. There are now numerous databases and tools that are widely used by researchers in biomedicine. However, successful development of future bioinformatics applications depends on a formalized representation of domain knowledge. This book provides a timely and first-of-its-kind collection of contributed chapters on anatomy ontologies. It is interdisciplinary in its approach, bringing together expertise from computing and biomedical studies. The book covers both theoretical and applied aspects, with an emphasis on newer work relevant to the emerging semantic web. Although written for readers involved in developing the next generation of IT applications in life sciences, biomedicine and health care, this unique book is of interest to anyone who develops and uses anatomy ontologies or is involved in the actual development of relevant semantic web applications.

Existing Anatomy Ontologies for Human, Model Organisms and Plants.- Anatomical Ontologies for Model Organisms: The Fungi and Animals.- Plant Structure Ontology (PSO)- A Morphological and Anatomical Ontology of Flowering Plants.- Anatomy for Clinical Terminology.- The Foundational Model of Anatomy Ontology.- Towards a Disease Ontology.- Engineering and Linking of Anatomy Ontologies.- Ontology Alignment and Merging.- COBrA and COBrA-CT: Ontology Engineering Tools.- XSPAN - A Cross-Species Anatomy Network.- Searching Biomedical Literature with Anatomy Ontologies.- Anatomy Ontologies and Spatio-Temporal Atlases.- Anatomical Ontologies: Linking Names to Places in Biology.- Time in Anatomy.- The Edinburgh Mouse Atlas.- The Smart Atlas: Spatial and Semantic Strategies for Multiscale Integration of Brain Data.- Anatomy Ontologies - Modelling Principles.- Modelling Principles and Methodologies - Relations in Anatomical Ontologies.- Modeling Principles and Methodologies - Spatial Representationand Reasoning.- CARO - The Common Anatomy Reference Ontology.