title: DT-Planner: an environment for managing dynamic decision problems.
abstract: The problem of formulating plans under uncertainty and coping with dynamic decision problems is a major task of both artificial intelligence and control theory applications in medicine. In this paper we will describe a software package, called DT-Planner, designed to represent and solve dynamic decision problems that can be modelled as Markov decision processes, by exploiting a novel graphical formalism, called influence view. An influence view is a directed acyclic graph that depicts the probabilistic relationships between the problem state variables in a generic time transition; additional variables, called event variables, may be added, in order to describe the conditional independencies between state variables. By using the specified conditional independence structure, an influence view may allow a parsimonious specification of a Markov decision process. DT-Planner lets the user specify and manage models through a user-friendly graphical interface, and implements efficient for policy determination algorithms. DT-Planner is written in C with Open Interface libraries and can be obtained, for non commercial use, via anonymous ftp without charge.
authors.affiliation: Dipartimento di Informatica e Sistemistica, Università degli Studi di Pavia, Italy. magni@aimed11.unipv.it
authors.forename: P
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Magni
authors.forename: R
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Bellazzi
mesh_terms: D000465:Algorithms; D016026:Bone Marrow Transplantation / Q000009:adverse effects; D003196:Computer Graphics; D003201:Computers; D016572:Cyclosporine / Q000008:administration & dosage; D003658:Decision Making, Computer-Assisted; D006086:Graft vs Host Disease / Q000209:etiology / Q000517:prevention & control; D006801:Humans; D007166:Immunosuppressive Agents / Q000008:administration & dosage; D008390:Markov Chains; D012984:Software; D013813:Therapy, Computer-Assisted
chemical_list: D007166:Immunosuppressive Agents; D016572:Cyclosporine