Patent ID: 7031970
Filing Date: 2006-04-18
Classification: G06F,Y10S

Abstract:
1. A method of forming a summary for hierarchically related information, where the information can be represented as a set of nodes wherein each node is associated with a portion of the information and that portion of the information contains at least one sentence, and wherein the nodes are connected by directed edges such that each node has at most one incoming edge, a parent node is the source of an incoming edge, and a child node is the target of an outgoing edge, the method comprising: a) determining a sentence vector for each sentence associated with each node, b) determining a centroid vector of the sentence vectors, c) determining an intrinsic score for each sentence using the centroid vector, d) selecting the sentence with the highest intrinsic score as a summary sentence to form a summary, e) determining an extract score for each of the remaining sentences using the intrinsic score for the remaining sentence and at least one summary sentence included in the summary, f) selecting the sentence having the highest extract score as a summary sentence and adding the summary sentence to the summary, and g) repeating steps e) and f) until a desired number of sentences from the remaining sentences are selected as summary sentences for inclusion in the summary.