Improving TCM Question Answering through Tree-Organized Self-Reflective Retrieval with LLMs

Fuente: arXiv
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Autores principales: Liu, Chang, Chang, Ying, Li, Jianmin, Qu, Yiqian, Li, Yu, Cao, Lingyong, Lin, Shuyuan
Formato: Preprint
Publicado: 2025
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author Liu, Chang
Chang, Ying
Li, Jianmin
Qu, Yiqian
Li, Yu
Cao, Lingyong
Lin, Shuyuan
author_facet Liu, Chang
Chang, Ying
Li, Jianmin
Qu, Yiqian
Li, Yu
Cao, Lingyong
Lin, Shuyuan
contents Objectives: Large language models (LLMs) can harness medical knowledge for intelligent question answering (Q&A), promising support for auxiliary diagnosis and medical talent cultivation. However, there is a deficiency of highly efficient retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) frameworks within the domain of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM). Our purpose is to observe the effect of the Tree-Organized Self-Reflective Retrieval (TOSRR) framework on LLMs in TCM Q&A tasks. Materials and Methods: We introduce the novel approach of knowledge organization, constructing a tree structure knowledge base with hierarchy. At inference time, our self-reflection framework retrieves from this knowledge base, integrating information across chapters. Questions from the TCM Medical Licensing Examination (MLE) and the college Classics Course Exam (CCE) were randomly selected as benchmark datasets. Results: By coupling with GPT-4, the framework can improve the best performance on the TCM MLE benchmark by 19.85% in absolute accuracy, and improve recall accuracy from 27% to 38% on CCE datasets. In manual evaluation, the framework improves a total of 18.52 points across dimensions of safety, consistency, explainability, compliance, and coherence. Conclusion: The TOSRR framework can effectively improve LLM's capability in Q&A tasks of TCM.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2502_09156
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Improving TCM Question Answering through Tree-Organized Self-Reflective Retrieval with LLMs
Liu, Chang
Chang, Ying
Li, Jianmin
Qu, Yiqian
Li, Yu
Cao, Lingyong
Lin, Shuyuan
Computation and Language
Objectives: Large language models (LLMs) can harness medical knowledge for intelligent question answering (Q&A), promising support for auxiliary diagnosis and medical talent cultivation. However, there is a deficiency of highly efficient retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) frameworks within the domain of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM). Our purpose is to observe the effect of the Tree-Organized Self-Reflective Retrieval (TOSRR) framework on LLMs in TCM Q&A tasks. Materials and Methods: We introduce the novel approach of knowledge organization, constructing a tree structure knowledge base with hierarchy. At inference time, our self-reflection framework retrieves from this knowledge base, integrating information across chapters. Questions from the TCM Medical Licensing Examination (MLE) and the college Classics Course Exam (CCE) were randomly selected as benchmark datasets. Results: By coupling with GPT-4, the framework can improve the best performance on the TCM MLE benchmark by 19.85% in absolute accuracy, and improve recall accuracy from 27% to 38% on CCE datasets. In manual evaluation, the framework improves a total of 18.52 points across dimensions of safety, consistency, explainability, compliance, and coherence. Conclusion: The TOSRR framework can effectively improve LLM's capability in Q&A tasks of TCM.
title Improving TCM Question Answering through Tree-Organized Self-Reflective Retrieval with LLMs
topic Computation and Language
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2502.09156