MeSH: add name synonyms from mesh concepts / terms

[dhimmel]

It would be nice to have synonyms for each MeSH node (i.e. descriptor / SCRs).

Background

From Concept Structure in MeSH:

Terms in a MeSH record which are strictly synonymous with each other are grouped in a category called a "Concept." (Not to be confused with Supplementary Concept Records.) See the Concept element in MeSH. Each MeSH record consists of one or more Concepts, and each Concept consists in one or more synonymous terms. For example,

Cardiomegaly [Descriptor]
     Cardiomegaly                      [Concept, Preferred]
          Cardiomegaly                    [Term, Preferred]
          Enlarged Heart                  [Term]
          Heart Enlargement               [Term]
     Cardiac Hypertrophy               [Concept, Narrower]
          Cardiac Hypertrophy             [Term, Preferred]
          Heart Hypertrophy               [Term]

This Descriptor record consists of two Concepts and five terms. Each Concept has a Preferred Term, which is also said to be the name of the Concept. And each record has a Preferred Concept. The name of the record - the term most often used to refer to the Descriptor - is the Preferred Term of the preferred Concept.

Within each Concept the terms are synonymous with each other. In contrast, the terms in one Concept are not strictly synonymous with terms in another Concept, even in the same record. For example, one concept in a record may be narrower than the Preferred Concept, as in the above example. Also note that the terms in a concept inherit this relationship and so are narrower, for example, than the terms in the other concept. However, all the terms in a record are equivalent for purposes of indexing and searching MEDLINE and so they are still entry terms for the record.

A more complex example, with three Concepts and 12 terms.

AIDS Dementia Complex [Descriptor]
     AIDS Dementia Complex                                   [Concept, Preferred]
          AIDS Dementia Complex                                 [Term, Preferred]
          Acquired-Immune Deficiency Syndrome Dementia Complex  [Term]
          AIDS-Related Dementia Complex                         [Term]
          HIV Dementia                                          [Term]
          Dementia Complex, Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome [Term]
          Dementia Complex, AIDS-Related                        [Term]
     HIV Encephalopathy                                       [Concept, Narrower]
          HIV Encephalopathy                                    [Term, Preferred]
          AIDS Encephalopathy                                   [Term]
          Encephalopathy, HIV                                   [Term, Preferred]
          Encephalopathy, AIDS                                  [Term]
     HIV-1-Associated Cognitive Motor Complex                [Concept, Narrower]
          HIV-1-Associated Cognitive Motor Complex              [Term, Preferred]
          HIV-1 Cognitive and Motor Complex                     [Term]

... Note that this three-tiered structure is within a given record, not between separate records. This is in contrast to the MeSH Tree Structures, which are hierarchical in structure, but the relationships are between different Descriptor records. MeSH includes both types of relationships. See "Concepts, Synonyms, and Descriptor Structure" in Introduction to MeSH in XML format.

Also noting this reference from "Concepts, Synonyms, and Descriptor Structure":

Redefining a Thesaurus: Term-Centric No More
Douglas Johnston, Stuart J Nelson, Jacque-Lynne A Schulman, Allan G Savage, Tammy P Powell
Proceedings of the AMIA Symposium (1998)
PMCID: PMC2232255

[dhimmel]

More helpful documentation

Concepts

From https://hhs.github.io/meshrdf/concepts

A concept is a class in MeSH RDF with the name meshv:Concept. MeSH Concepts are all assigned ‘M’ identifiers. A MeSH Concept represents a unit of meaning. Each MeSH record consists of one or more Concepts, and each Concept consists in one or more synonymous terms. Collections of concepts that may be useful for search and retrieval on a given topic are placed into the same MeSH Descriptor. A concept is considered ‘preferred’ if its name is used by the descriptor to which it belongs.

Terms

From https://hhs.github.io/meshrdf/terms

A term is a human readable name used by a MeSH Concept. Within a MeSH concept, terms are strictly synonymous. In MeSH RDF, terms are members of the class meshv:Term. Terms in MeSH often have lexical permutations, such as ‘Abnormality, Congenital’ as opposed to ‘Congenital Abnormalities’. In MeSH RDF, terms have a property of ‘prefLabel’ and ‘altLabel’ to describe this lexical difference.