title: Proposal of diagnostic process model for computer based diagnosis.
abstract: We aim at making a diagnosis support system that can be put to practical use. We proposed a diagnostic process model based on simple knowledge which can be gleaned from textbooks. We defined clinical finding (CF) as a general concept for patient's symptom or findings etc., whose value is expressed by Boolean. We call the combination of several CFs a "CF pattern", and a set of CF patterns with concomitant diseases "case base". We consider diagnosis as a process of searching an instance from the case base whose CF pattern is concomitant with that of a patient. The diseases which have the same CF pattern are candidates for diagnosis. Then we select a CF which is present in part of the candidates and check whether it is present or absent in the patient in order to narrow down the candidates. Because the case base does not exist in reality, the probability of CF pattern is calculated by the product of CF occurrence rate assuming that occurrence of CF is independent. Therefore the knowledge required for diagnosis is frequency of disease under sex and age group and CF-disease relation (CF and its occurrence rate in the disease). By processing these two types of knowledge, diagnosis can be made.
authors.affiliation: Medical Informatics, Osaka University Graduate School of Medicine, Osaka, Japan. matumura@hp-info.med.osaka-u.ac.jp
authors.forename: Yasushi
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Matsumura
authors.forename: Toshihiro
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Takeda
authors.forename: Shiro
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Manabe
authors.forename: Hirokazu
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Saito
authors.forename: Kei
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Teramoto
authors.forename: Shigeki
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Kuwata
authors.forename: Naoki
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Mihara
mesh_terms: D000465:Algorithms; D003627:Data Interpretation, Statistical; D020000:Decision Support Systems, Clinical; D003661:Decision Support Techniques; D003936:Diagnosis, Computer-Assisted / Q000379:methods*