A web-based 3D ontology navigation system for spinal disease diagnosis

This paper presents a web-based three-dimensional (3D) navigation system for a spinal disease ontology using a 3D virtual human spine. The 3D navigation system consists of three main modules: a query module for finding spinal diseases and their causes and treatments from the spinal disease ontology via a web page, a 3D rendering module for rendering the virtual human spine on a web browser, and a visualization module to view the retrieved ontology information by connecting it with the virtual human spine. It was implemented using Virtuosos SPARQL, Java, JavaScript, Jena API, JDBC, AJAX, HTML5, WebGL, and SVG using a Virtuoso server on the Web via JSP web pages. Spine specialists can navigate and simulate spinal diseases using the 3D navigation system via virtual experiments based on the ontological interrelations, allowing them to make more accurate diagnoses of spinal diseases.