title: Processing and representation of meta-data for sleep apnea diagnosis with an artificial intelligence approach.
abstract: In this article, we revise and try to resolve some of the problems inherent in questionnaire screening of sleep apnea cases and apnea diagnosis based on attributes which are relevant and reliable. We present a way of learning information about the relevance of the data, comparing this with the definition of the information by the medical expert. We generate a predictive data model using a data aggregation operator which takes relevance and reliability information about the data into account to produce a diagnosis for each case. We also introduce a grade of membership for each question response which allows the patient to indicate a level of confidence or doubt in their own judgement. The method is tested with data collected from patients in a Sleep Clinic using questionnaires specially designed for the study. Other artificial intelligence predictive modeling algorithms are also tested on the same data and their predictive accuracy compared to that of the aggregation operator.
authors.affiliation: Consulting Group-Business Intelligence, IBM Global Services, Barcelona, Spain. dnettlet@es.ibm.com
authors.forename: D
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Nettleton
authors.forename: J
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Muñiz
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D000465:Algorithms; D001185:Artificial Intelligence; D003625:Data Collection; D003661:Decision Support Techniques; D005260:Female; D017143:Fuzzy Logic; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012891:Sleep Apnea Syndromes / Q000175:diagnosis*; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires