Anatomic location

A discrete anatomic concept, curated for imaging use and identified by a RadLex identifier. The rationale is stated plainly on the project site: “standard identifiers for discrete anatomic locations would enable numerous levels of interoperability if applied broadly,” but existing ontologies are unsuited to that job because they lack needed terms, carry too many degenerate ones, and have limited anatomic organization. The response is curation: “we are curating a subset of anatomic concepts from existing ontologies and shaping them into a usable collection of anatomic identifiers for informatics interoperability.”¹

Two implementations exist. The original curated set holds 2,890 nodes with radlexId, description, containedById, partOfId, a leftId/rightId/unsidedId triad, sexSpecific, synonyms, and codes into SNOMED CT, FMA, UMLS, and MeSH.² The newer anatomic-locations package normalizes the same material into a richer model with region, location_type, body_system, structure_type, a laterality enum, precomputed containment and part-of paths, and left_variant/right_variant/generic_variant references.³

Synonyms and near-synonyms

• Body part is the older term, surviving in body_parts.json and in the two wrapper libraries.
• ACR Common anatomic location refers to the same set through its acrCommonId cross-reference.
• bodySite is the FHIR field that carries one.
• Body region is coarser: a region is a grouping, a location is a structure.
• Anatomic scope is a constraint on a definition, not a place.

Identifier form

A RadLex RID. Sided variants in the original set use composite identifiers matching ^RID\d+(_RID\d+)*$, for example RID294_RID5824 for the left uterine adnexa.²

Where it is used

Why anatomic locations, Data model, and Anatomic location assignment rules.

Conflicts

The two lineages are not synchronized and differ in count, field names, and laterality representation; see Lineage and current implementation. The next-generation CDE vocabulary defines AnatomicLocation as “an anatomical reference identified by its RadLex identity, with temporary sided-variant exceptions governed by the anatomy track,” treating sided variants as provisional, whereas the OIDM sets make them first-class nodes.⁴

Footnotes

1. anatomiclocations.org site homepage ↩

2. anatomiclocations.org data file description ↩ ↩²

3. AnatomicLocation model in the anatomic-locations package ↩

4. CDE vocabulary, next-generation working glossary ↩