The KMeD project has completed. The KMeD website now serves as a historical record of the findings and accomplishments of the KMeD team.
A part of the National Science Foundation Scientific Database Initiative Grant IRI 9116849
Last updated on June 12th, 2001

This page contains a brief overview of UCLA's KMeD research project. Read it to get a general idea of what KMeD is and what it aims to achieve.
The objectives of the Knowledge-Based Multimedia Medical Distributed Database System (KMeD) are to:
  1. Query medical multimedia distributed databases by both image and alphanumeric content,
  2. Model the temporal, spatial, and evolutionary nature of medical objects,
  3. Formulate queries using conceptual and imprecise medical terms and support cooperative processing,
  4. Develop a domain-independent, high-level query language and a medical domain user interface to support KMeD functionality, and
  5. Provide analysis and presentation methods for visualization of knowledge and data models.
The database is represented by features and objects. Using rules derived from application and domain knowledge, approximate and conceptual queries may be answered. Additional information relevant to a query may be provided by associating different hierarchies of subjects. Type abstraction hierarchies (TAHs) generalize a query's scope while relaxation control, based on user profiles and query context, trims the TAHs, keeping the generalizations manageable and appropriate. An explanation system details the relaxation path and the nearness of the approximate answer to the exact one.
These concepts are validated in a testbed linked with radiology image databases. The joint research between the UCLA Computer Science Department and the School of Medicine assures that the prototype system is of direct interest to medical research and practice. The results of this research are extensible to other multimedia database applications.
Return to the KMeD main page