title: Moddicom: a complete and easily accessible library for prognostic evaluations relying on image features.
abstract: Decision Support Systems (DSSs) are increasingly exploited in the area of prognostic evaluations. For predicting the effect of therapies on patients, the trend is now to use image features, i.e. information that can be automatically computed by considering images resulting by analysis. The DSSs application as predictive tools is particularly suitable for cancer treatment, given the peculiarities of the disease -which is highly localised and lead to significant social costs- and the large number of images that are available for each patient. At the state of the art, there exists tools that allow to handle image features for prognostic evaluations, but they are not designed for medical experts. They require either a strong engineering or computer science background since they do not integrate all the required functions, such as image retrieval and storage. In this paper we fill this gap by proposing Moddicom, a user-friendly complete library specifically designed to be exploited by physicians. A preliminary experimental analysis, performed by a medical expert that used the tool, demonstrates the efficiency and the effectiveness of Moddicom.
authors.forename: Nicola
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Dinapoli
authors.forename: Anna Rita
authors.initials: AR
authors.lastname: Alitto
authors.forename: Mauro
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Vallati
authors.forename: Roberto
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Gatta
authors.forename: Rosa
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Autorino
authors.forename: Luca
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Boldrini
authors.forename: Andrea
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Damiani
authors.forename: Vincenzo
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Valentini
mesh_terms: D006801:Humans; D016247:Information Storage and Retrieval; D011379:Prognosis; D012984:Software; D014584:User-Computer Interface