Patent Document ID: 7743010
Application ID: 11812777

Base Claim:
1. Method of calculating and encoding a score of semantic and spatial similarity between concepts of an ontology stored in hierarchically numbered trellis form, each concept of the trellis having an associated identifier comprising at least one path, each path consisting of a series of integers and corresponding to a succession of arcs oriented between the concept to which said at least one path is allocated and the universal concept to form a hierarchy of concepts under the universal concept, each path associated with said concept defining a route through successive parent, respectively child, concepts, making it possible to reach the concept, wherein the method consists at least in calculating and encoding a semantic and spatial similarity score by convergence relative to their common semantic characteristics respectively by separation according to their spatial distance for each concept with respect to a central concept, taken two-by-two.

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Claim 6:
6. Method according to claim 1 , wherein the step for calculating and encoding a semantic and spatial similarity score includes at least the step consisting in calculating and encoding a score of similarity of a concept with respect to a central concept belonging to said second subhierarchy of concepts by converging said concept with respect to the central concept according to the common semantic characteristics of the latter and by separating said concept with respect to said central concept by a number of specialization steps with respect to the general concept common to the latter, by assigning a penalty value, dependent on the depth of said hierarchy of concepts.