title: Consultation system for diagnosis of headache and facial pain: RHINOS.
abstract: How does a doctor make a diagnosis based on his medical knowledge? A hypothesis is proposed concerning the diagnostic method of specialized doctors. The knowledge provided by an authority is used to establish a diagnostic system for headache and facial pain named RHINOS. RHINOS is based on the above hypothesis as represented by the programming language Prolog, which is operative on an NEC PC-9801 microcomputer with reasonable CPU time. This implementation form benefited greatly from RHINOS's portability and availability. RHINOS has four types of rules, two levels, acting as a forward link from manifestations to diseases. It also has disease images as a backward link from diseases to manifestations. With this knowledge, RHINOS makes not only a single diagnosis but also differential diagnosis, and diagnosis for complicated cases of two or more diseases. The disease-image link made this possible. RHINOS was applied for diagnoses of 50 patients: 82% of its answers were equivalent to those made by a specialist, and a further 16% were close to the right answers.
mesh_terms: D001161:Arteriosclerosis / Q000150:complications / Q000175:diagnosis; D001932:Brain Neoplasms / Q000150:complications / Q000175:diagnosis; D003201:Computers; D003936:Diagnosis, Computer-Assisted; D005157:Facial Pain / Q000175:diagnosis*; D006261:Headache / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000209:etiology; D006801:Humans; D008838:Microcomputers