Engineering, 2013, 5, 1-6
http://dx.doi.org/10.4236/eng.2013.510B001 Published Online October 2013 (http://www.scirp.org/journal/eng)
Copyright © 2013 SciRes. ENG
Construction and Application of the Multidimensional
Table for Knowledge Discovery in Ancient Chinese Books
on Materi a Medica
Rui Jin1,2, Qian Lin3*, Jun Zhou1, Boyu Sun1, Bing Zhang1*
1School of Chinese Materia Medica, Beijing University of Chinese Medicine, Beijing, China
2Department of Pharmacy, Beijing Shijitan Hospital, Beijing, China
3School of Mathematical Science, Peking University, Beijing, China
Email: *lillianlin@pku.edu.cn, *zhangbing6@263.net
Received August 2012
ABSTRACT
Knowledge discovery, as an increasingly adopted information technology in biomedical science, has shown great
promise in the field of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM). In this paper, we prov ide d a kind of multidimensional
table which was well suited for organizing and analyzing the data in ancient Chinese books on Materia Medica. More-
over, we demonstrated its capability of facilitating further mining works in TCM through two illustrative studies of
discovering meaningful patterns in the three-dimensional table of Shennongs Classic of Materia Medica. This work
might provide an appropriate data model for the development of knowledge discovery in TCM.
Keywords: Multidimensional Table; TCM; Herbal Medicine; Data Mining; Knowledge Di s c overy
1. Introduction
Data mining and knowledge discovery, as incremental
adopted information technologies in biomedical science,
have shown great promise in the field of Traditional
Chinese Medicine (TCM) for years. Based on a different
view toward human life and disease, TCM has developed
a distinct medical system for diagnosis and treatment
during thous a nds of years, whic h has accumulated a large
number of medical and pharmaceutical data [1]. In the
past years, it has been increasingly adopted as an impor-
tant complementary healing therapy around the world [2]
and has attracted researchers among different areas to
mine the knowledge goldburied in TCM data mo u n -
tains [3-5]. Thus, data mining techniques are believed to
be able to bridge the gap between the availability of large
amounts of data and the difficulty of obtaining novel
knowledge about TCM, especially the medical theory
such as yin-yang and five elements.
Learning rich dialectical thoughts from the ancient
Chinese philosophies, TCM views the world and human
body as a whole and analyzes their relationship with yin-
yang and five elements theory. These theories build a
universal foundation for the specific theories related to
the diagnosis and treatment, such as syndrome differen-
tiation theory, Zang Fu theory, and Chin ese herbal medi-
cine theory [1]. Among them, the Chinese herbal medi-
cine theory (herbal property, compatibility, the multiple
effectiveness of herbal medicine, etc.) is believed to be a
breakthrough in TCM modernization, which is worthy of
further investigation. Thus , Chinese Herbal Medicine
Informatics (CHMI) has arisen gradually [6-8] and an-
cient Chinese books on Materia Medica, the conventional
media storing the information of medicinal herbs, are
always the preferred materials for study.
Shennongs Classic of Materia Medica (SCMM ), also
known as Shennong Bencao Jing, is among the great
classics of herbal pharmacology and the earliest extant
one. The book collects 365 kinds of Chine se medicines
and involves many aspects of medicines such as alias, qi
and flavor, efficacy and their origins. More than 170
kinds of diseases are discussed, including diseases of
internal medicine, surgery, gynecology, pediatrics, etc.
[9]. Since many of the recorded herbs are still used in
TCM therapies currently, SCM M has received sufficient
attention in modern research. However, due to the an-
cient Chinese vocabularies, expert data cleansing and
integration are needed for accessibility to modern re-
searchers.
Moreover, to be more effective and valuable, the cre-
dibility of the data source and the contribution to new
knowledge acquisition are required in the process of data
mining. For knowledge discovery in TCM, three aspects
of data quality should be highlighted to improve data
*Corresponding a uthor.
R. JIN ET AL.
Copyright © 2013 SciRes. ENG
2
credibility including representation granularity, repre-
sentation consistency and completeness [10]. Another
key issue is the transformation from data mining results
generated by the computer into novel TCM knowledge.
As a solution, the two-cycle model was provided by
Wang in 2008 [11] who has attached importance to the
collaboration of medical researchers and data mining
researchers.
In this paper, w e intended to establish a kind of multi-
dimensional table to manage herbal information con-
tained in Materia Medica books, as well as to permit data
to be easily accessed and analyzed. Taking SCMM for
example, we constructed the three-dimensional table that
presented the major aspects of herbs including herbal qi,
herbal flavor and herbal efficacy. Furthermore, we ap-
plied the three-dimensional table of SCMM to mining
novel knowledge related to Chinese herbal theory. This
framework might provide as a helpful tool for informa-
tion management and unde r standi ng i n T C M .
The rest of the paper is organized as follows. Section 2
described the process of constructing the multidimen-
sional table for appropriate organization of information
contained in SCMM. Section 3 presented two application
examples involving association rules mining and cluster-
ing analysis. Finally we pro vided the conclusions in Sec-
tion 4.
2. The Construction of Multidimensional
Table
Ancient Chinese materia medica books are among the
most important resources of TCM for data mining, which
constitute the foundations of CHMI. As a practical ma -
nual of TCM drug therapy, the information about herbal
name and botanical origins recorded in the book guaran-
tees the fit medicinal herbs, while the information about
herbal property and efficacy reflects the direct expe-
riences of TCM practitioners on clinical drug use [12,13].
Actually, in the view of data management, the text in
these books shares common features of semi-structured
data, which contains tags or other markers to separate
semantic elements and enforce hierarchies of records and
fields within the data [14]. For example, SC MM is com-
posed of 365 medicine records prepared by classical
Chinese words. Each re cord is written in accordan ce with
the record format which can be divided into six parts
including herbal name, herbal qi, herbal flavor, herbal
efficacy, alias and source land (Figure 1). The first four
parts which formed the main body of Chinese herbal
theory were selected in this work to construct the multi-
dimensional table.
2.1. Table Structure
A multidimensional table is a multidimensional array
consisting of records (rows) and fields (columns), which
is suited for organizing and analyzing the data in ancient
Chinese books on Materia Medica. In the data table of
SCMM, each row represented a single herbal medicine.
Herbal qi, herbal flavor and herbal efficacy, which are
among the most significant parameters to define the clin-
ical performances of medicinal herbs, were employed as
fields. In addition, each of the first two fields could be
split into five categories due to its structur ed data model.
However, the field of efficacy presented as semi-struc-
tured text, would be split into a determinate number of
categories after appropriate data integration. Therefore,
the resulting table would have three dimensions, since
each categorized variable represented one dimension.
The ultimate data model was shown in Table 1, which
also contained a unique identifier (Herb ID) and herbal
name. The concrete information of each dimension is as
follows:
1) Herbal qi dimension: It is th e structured data which
has five attributes (equiva lent to categories in the field in
this paper) including cold, cool, neutral, warm and hot.
Only one attribute can serve as the marker for each herb
in this dimension.
Figure 1. Herbal medicine recor ds in Shennongs classic of materia medica.
Table 1. Data model of SCMM.
Column 1 Column 2 Column 3 Column 4 Column 5
Herb ID Herb name Herb nature Herb flavor Efficacy
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3
2) Herbal flavor dimension: It is the structured data
which has five attributes including pungent, sweet, sour,
bitter and s alty. Only one attribute can serve as the marker
for each herb in this dimension.
3) Herbal efficacy dimension: It is the semi-structured
data which can be divided into a finite number of
attributes after data integration. Several attributes can
serve as the markers for each herb in this dimension.
2.2. Data Preprocess
Since most of the ancient Chinese Materia Medica b ooks
are prepared by classical Chinese and provided with dif-
ferent versions, data preprocess (e.g. data cleaning, data
integration and annotation) is indispensable for ensuring
data quality. In this wor k, regarding to synonyms of effi-
cacy terms in Classical Chinese, some ancient and con-
temporary references including Zhu Bing Yuan Hou Lun
[15], Internal Medicine of TCM [16], Surgery of TCM
[17], Obstetrics and Gynecology of TCM [18] and two
proofreading and annotation books for SCMM [19,20]
were employed to achieve representation consistency.
Finally, 196 items were acquired for attributes in efficacy
dimension. Thus, semi-structured data records presented
in Figure 1 can be converted into a data table shown in
Table 2.
After the selection of defined attributes in three di-
mensions separately, a kind of three-dimensional table
was constructed in an Excel file format. The row of the
table represented the information of a single herbal med-
icine. The medicine was located in the table using Boo-
lean values whose expression was evaluated to 0 if the
medicine did not have the corresponding attribute, 1 if it
have (Table 3). Taking ginseng for example, the value of
the cell identified by the row of ginseng and the column
(attribute) of cool was 1 while other values in this di-
mension were 0 because the herbal qi of ginseng was
cool.
3. The Application of Multidimensional
Table
Above all, the digitization of information in ancien t Chi-
nese materia medica books was achieved appropriately
Table 2. Data table of herbal me dicine records in SCMM.
Herb ID Herb name Herbal qi Herbal flavor Herbal efficacy
1 Radix Ginseng Cool Sweet Tonifying the middle qi, Nourishing essence-spirit, Settling soul and
spirit, Tranquilizing, Removing pathogenic qi, Improving vision,
Enhancing the wisdow, Promoting longevity
2 Radix Glycyrrhizae Neutral Sweet
Removing pathogenic qi in Zang and Fu, Strengthening muscles and
bones, Tonifying qi , Curing war wounds, Removing toxicity, Promoting
longevity
3 Radix Scutellaria Neutral Bitter Clearing heat, Treating jaundice, Curing diarrea, Removing water
retention, Curing amenorr hea, Treating sore and ulcer, Treating unhealed
sore
4 Fructus Gardenia Cold Bitter
Removing pathogenic qi in Zang, Clearing heat, Treating sore and ulcer,
Curing leprosy, Relieving reddened complexion, Treating acne
erythematosa
5 Radix Aconiti Carmichaeli Hot Pungent
Warming the middle qi, Removing pathogenic qi, Relieving cough with
dyspnea, Curing aggregation-accumulation, Curing impediment disease
and wilting disease, Curing war wounds
6 Fructus Evodiae Hot Pungent Warming the middle qi, Relieving cough with dyspnea, Curing cold and
heat, Treating fixed impediment and blood impedime nt, dispersing wind
pathogen, Relieving pain, Releasing the exterior
Table 3. An example of the three-dimensional table.
Herb
ID Herb
na me
Herbal qi Herbal flavor Herbal efficacya
Cold Cool Neutral Warm Hot Sour Bitter Sweet Pungent Salty Promoting
longevit y
Removing
pathogenic
qi
Warming
the
middle qi
Clearing
heat
Curing
war
wounds
1
Radix
Ginseng
0 1 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 1 1 0 0 0
2
Radix
Glycyrrhi zae 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 1 1 0 0 1
3
Radix
Scutellaria 0 0 1 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0
4
Fructus
Gardenia 1 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 1 0 1 0
5
Radix Aconiti
Carmichaeli
0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 1 0 0 1 1 0 1
6
Fructus
Evodiae 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 1 0 0
aFive attributes in herbal efficacy dimension were chosen for display.
R. JIN ET AL.
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4
by the multidimensional table, which could facilitate
further data mining works. The complete three-dime n-
sional table of SCMM consisted of 365 herb records, in-
cluding 5 attributes in herbal qi dimension , 5 attributes in
herbal flavor dimension and 196 attributes in herbal effi-
cacy dimension. Then, two data mining researches, an
association rules mining [21] and a cluster analysis [22],
were implemented to search for correlations between
attributes and between records respectively (Figure 2).
They would contribute to the acquisition of novel know-
ledge about Chines e herbal theory.
3.1. Association Rules Mining
In this section, frequent patterns and valued association
rules between attributes in the dimension of herbal
qi/flavor and herbal efficacy were mined. These kinds of
association rules demonstrated the strong relations be-
tween herbal property and herbal efficacy, promoting the
understanding of Chinese herbal theory. Setting the
proper parameters, we acquired 115 strong association
rules by the Apriori algorithm (Table 4), which pre-
sented the evidence to discriminate the qi/flavor of the
medicinal herb with specific efficacy. As we can see,
some efficacy attributes in Table 2 were among them
such as promoting longevity, clearing heat, warming the
middle qi, etc.
3.2. Cluster Analysis
In this section, a classification study was implemented by
using se mi -supervised incremental clustering algorithm.
Calculating the jaccard’s index of similarity between
every two herb records, we first selected the micro-clus-
ters whose members had exceptionally close correlations.
Then a k-nearest neighbor algorithm (k = 3) was used to
Figure 2. Two data mining studies based on the t hree-dimensional table of SCMM.
Table 4. Strong association rules.
Form Strong association rules
Total number Examples
Qi
Efficacy 1 Neutral
Promoting longevity
Flavor
Efficacy 3 Sweet
Tonifying qi
QiFlavor
Efficacy 18 SweetNeutral
Tonifying qi
Efficacy
Qi 38 Warming the middle qi
Hot; Promoting longevity
Neutral;
Removing toxicity
Neutral; Clearing heat
Cold
Efficacy
Flavor 46
Warming the middle qi
Pungent; Relieving cough with dyspnea
Pungent; Nourishing essence-spirit
Sweet; Removing water
retention
Bitter
Efficacy
QiFlavor 9 Warming the middle qi
PungentHot; Resolving hard mass in
stomach and intestine
BitterCold
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5
classify the rest of the herbs. The results showed that 2 53
herbal medicines were reasonably classified as 14 types
such as sort of invigoration, clearing heat, diuresis, treat-
ing impediment disease and treating gynecological dis-
ease, while the other 112 medicines were classified into
112 individual types. The same high similarity to differ-
ent known types might be the main reason for those ind i-
vidual herbs. Table 5 showed the major clusters involv-
ing more than 10 herbs.
4. Conclusion
Data mining is a promising technology which can be
applied in analyzing vast amounts of TCM data for in-
vestigating novel knowledge. In this paper, we provided
a kind of multidimensional table that was suited for the
data in ancient Chinese materia medica books, in order to
assist resear chers to manage the data in an efficient way.
Moreover, we also introduced two illustrative studies of
mining meaningful patterns in the three-dimensional ta-
ble of SCMM. The results provided evidence that the
multidimensional table could facilitate data mining
works in TCM.
Table 5. Representative clusters.
Type
Clusters
Total
number Examples Efficacy
1 105 Radi x ginseng
Radix Glycyrrhizae Invigoration
2 50 Radix Scutellaria
Fructus Gardenia Clearing heat
3 30 Rhizoma Ligustici Wallichi
Radix Angelicae Sinensis T
reating gynecological
disease
4 15 Rhizoma Podophyllum
Scolopendra Subspinipes T
reating strange diease
caused by ghost
5 12 Nidus Vespae
Calculus Bovis Treating fright
palpitation
6 11 Folium Pyrrosiae
Semen Plantaginis Diuresis
7 10 Radix Aconiti Carmichaeli
Fructus Evodiae Treating impediment
disease
5. Acknowledgements
This work is supported by China 973 project (2007-
CB512605), the Scientific Research Innovation Team of
Beijing University of Chinese Medicine (2011-CXTD-14)
and Hui-Chun Chin and Tsung-Dao Lee Chinese Under-
graduate Research Endowment (second author).
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