Clinical Abbreviation Disambiguation Using Neural Word Embeddings

This study examined the use of neural word embeddings for clinical abbreviation disambiguation, a special case of word sense disambiguation (WSD). We investigated three different methods for deriving word embeddings from a large unlabeled clinical corpus: one existing method called Surrounding based embedding feature (SBE), and two newly developed methods: Left-Right surrounding based embedding feature (LRSBE) and MAX surrounding based embedding feature (MAXSBE). We then added these word embeddings as additional features to a Support Vector Machines (SVM) based WSD system. Evaluation using the clinical abbreviation datasets from both the Vanderbilt University and the University of Minnesota showed that neural word embedding features improved the performance of the SVMbased clinical abbreviation disambiguation system. More specifically, the new MAXSBE method outperformed the other two methods and achieved the state-of-the-art performance on both clinical abbreviation datasets.