A unified framework for semantic comparison of objects: extension to semantic graph comparison

Comparing objects described (or annotated) with an ontology is quite important in several application domains. In our previous work we have shown that when objects are annotated with single concepts or sets of concepts, most of the semantic measures found in literature can be rewritten by using a unified form and the notion of approximated information content. In this paper, we argue how this unified form and the notion of approximated information content can be extended to semantic graphs, being the latter resulting from objects annotated with graphs of concepts connected via relationships found in the ontology. We show that open issues and distortions found in the relevant state of the art are put under control. The resulting unified framework (covering all types of annotations, from single concepts to graphs of concepts) is therefore relevant for practicing, in a unique environment, several semantic measures, as required for building a new one or selecting a measure for given application objectives. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.