Using a symbiotic man/machine approach to evaluating visual clinical research data.
Some candidate medical expert system applications have a significant visual component. Knowledge engineers usually dismiss such task domains as potential expert systems applications. Our success in developing ESCA, a system for evaluating serial coronary angiograms, shows that such task domains should not be dismissed so quickly. We used a symbiotic approach between man and machine, where technologists provide the visual skills with an expert system imitating the conceptual skills of the expert, to produce a partially automated system that is more consistent and cost effective than one that is fully manual. The agreement between the system's conclusions and that of a panel of experts is good. The expert system actually has a slightly higher agreement rate with the expert panel than the agreement rate between two expert panel teams evaluating the same film pair.
Long
J M
JM
University of Minnesota, Minneapolis 55455.
Irani
E A
EA
Hunter
D W
DW
Slagle
J R
JR
Matts
J P
JP
Castaneda
W
W
Pearce
M
M
Bissett
J
J
Sawin
H
H
Edmiston
A
A
D000790:Angiocardiography; D002985:Clinical Protocols; D003936:Diagnosis, Computer-Assisted / Q000379:methods*; D005103:Expert Systems; D006801:Humans; D008328:Man-Machine Systems