Session:

Mini-Symposia: Computational Medicine Building and Applying Intelligent Systems in Health
Tuesday, March 02, 2004, 11:50 - 12:10

Session Chair:

Peter Kokol

Paper Title:

How can we Benefit from Application of Intelligent Systems in Cardiology

Author(s):

M. Zorman, University of Maribor, Maribor, Slovenia
M. M. Štiglic, Dept. of Pediatric Surgery, General Maribor Hospital, Slovenia
P. Povalej, University of Maribor, Maribor, Slovenia
M. Lenic, University of Maribor, Maribor, Slovenia
M. Mertik, University of Maribor, Maribor, Slovenia
M. Molan Štiglic, University of Maribor, Maribor, Slovenia

Abstract:

In this paper we present the role of the physician in developing and using intelligent systems and benefits from using intelligent systems on cardiovascular database. As in many other areas, predictions play an important role in health care. What will be the status of the patient after the selected treatment, will the healing process end with the success or not are just some of the possible predictive questions faced by both patients and medical staff. Statistics can be of great help in many real world situations, but sometimes its use is limited. As an alternative we can use so called intelligent data analysis techniques like neural networks, case based reasoning, logic programming, or decision trees. The greatest weakness of the majority of these techniques is that they are black box approaches – normally giving good predictions but without explanation. One of the techniques overcoming this fault is the decision tree approach, which in addition to immense prediction power also explains the decisions leading to the predictions using a simple two dimensional graphical model. We used the decision tree approach in the intelligent analysis of cardiac diseases in the young. We got excellent results, where some new diagnostic rules and guidelines have been extracted.

Keywords - intelligent systems, decision making, cardiology, cardiovascular.