Elicitation of neurological knowledge with argument-based machine learning.
OBJECTIVE
The paper describes the use of expert's knowledge in practice and the efficiency of a recently developed technique called argument-based machine learning (ABML) in the knowledge elicitation process. We are developing a neurological decision support system to help the neurologists differentiate between three types of tremors: Parkinsonian, essential, and mixed tremor (comorbidity). The system is intended to act as a second opinion for the neurologists, and most importantly to help them reduce the number of patients in the "gray area" that require a very costly further examination (DaTSCAN). We strive to elicit comprehensible and medically meaningful knowledge in such a way that it does not come at the cost of diagnostic accuracy.


METHODS
To alleviate the difficult problem of knowledge elicitation from data and domain experts, we used ABML. ABML guides the expert to explain critical special cases which cannot be handled automatically by machine learning. This very efficiently reduces the expert's workload, and combines expert's knowledge with learning data. 122 patients were enrolled into the study.


RESULTS
The classification accuracy of the final model was 91%. Equally important, the initial and the final models were also evaluated for their comprehensibility by the neurologists. All 13 rules of the final model were deemed as appropriate to be able to support its decisions with good explanations.


CONCLUSIONS
The paper demonstrates ABML's advantage in combining machine learning and expert knowledge. The accuracy of the system is very high with respect to the current state-of-the-art in clinical practice, and the system's knowledge base is assessed to be very consistent from a medical point of view. This opens up the possibility to use the system also as a teaching tool.
Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, Faculty of Computer and Information Science, University of Ljubljana, Tržaška cesta 25, SI-1000 Ljubljana, Slovenia. vida.groznik@fri.uni-lj.si
Vida
V
Groznik
Matej
M
Guid
Aleksander
A
Sadikov
Martin
M
Možina
Dejan
D
Georgiev
Veronika
V
Kragelj
Samo
S
Ribarič
Zvezdan
Z
Pirtošek
Ivan
I
Bratko
D001185:Artificial Intelligence; D003198:Computer Simulation; D003936:Diagnosis, Computer-Assisted / Q000379:methods*; D020329:Essential Tremor / Q000175:diagnosis; D006801:Humans; D010300:Parkinson Disease / Q000175:diagnosis; D014202:Tremor / Q000175:diagnosis*