Biomaterial Database

Artificial neural networks within medical decision support systems. 1994

P K Sharpe, and P Caleb

Bristol Transputer Centre, Faculty of Computer Studies and Mathematics, University of the West of England, Frenchay, UK.

Artificial neural networks offer a way to actively assimilate both past and present knowledge, to extract information, to map correlations and to produce inferences from available data; all tasks which have relevance to the clinical laboratory. In this paper, we describe one useful artificial neural network technique, backpropagation, and describe some of the practical considerations which need to be taken account of when using such methods. Examples are presented of the application of artificial neural networks in medicine and, particularly, in clinical chemistry. The paper goes on to describe the use of these methods within medical decision support. We conclude that artificial neural networks are useful multivariate techniques which are well able to play an important role in a decision support system. Further, that their properties as function approximators could be utilised in other areas of clinical chemistry. We conclude by pointing out that the pattern recognition ability of artificial neural networks holds out the promise of extracting useful information from currently available data which is at present seen as being of little diagnostic utility.

UI	MeSH Term	Description	Entries
D002624	Chemistry, Clinical	The specialty of ANALYTIC CHEMISTRY applied to assays of physiologically important substances found in blood, urine, tissues, and other biological fluids for the purpose of aiding the physician in making a diagnosis or following therapy.	Clinical Chemistry
D003658	Decision Making, Computer-Assisted	Use of an interactive computer system designed to assist the physician or other health professional in choosing between certain relationships or variables for the purpose of making a diagnostic or therapeutic decision.	Computer-Assisted Decision Making,Medical Decision Making, Computer-Assisted,Computer Assisted Decision Making,Decision Making, Computer Assisted,Medical Decision Making, Computer Assisted
D003933	Diagnosis	The determination of the nature of a disease or condition, or the distinguishing of one disease or condition from another. Assessment may be made through physical examination, laboratory tests, or the likes. Computerized programs may be used to enhance the decision-making process.	Diagnose,Diagnoses and Examination,Antemortem Diagnosis,Diagnoses and Examinations,Examinations and Diagnoses,Postmortem Diagnosis,Antemortem Diagnoses,Diagnoses,Diagnoses, Antemortem,Diagnoses, Postmortem,Diagnosis, Antemortem,Diagnosis, Postmortem,Examination and Diagnoses,Postmortem Diagnoses
D006801	Humans	Members of the species Homo sapiens.	Homo sapiens,Man (Taxonomy),Human,Man, Modern,Modern Man
D016571	Neural Networks, Computer	A computer architecture, implementable in either hardware or software, modeled after biological neural networks. Like the biological system in which the processing capability is a result of the interconnection strengths between arrays of nonlinear processing nodes, computerized neural networks, often called perceptrons or multilayer connectionist models, consist of neuron-like units. A homogeneous group of units makes up a layer. These networks are good at pattern recognition. They are adaptive, performing tasks by example, and thus are better for decision-making than are linear learning machines or cluster analysis. They do not require explicit programming.	Computational Neural Networks,Connectionist Models,Models, Neural Network,Neural Network Models,Neural Networks (Computer),Perceptrons,Computational Neural Network,Computer Neural Network,Computer Neural Networks,Connectionist Model,Model, Connectionist,Model, Neural Network,Models, Connectionist,Network Model, Neural,Network Models, Neural,Network, Computational Neural,Network, Computer Neural,Network, Neural (Computer),Networks, Computational Neural,Networks, Computer Neural,Networks, Neural (Computer),Neural Network (Computer),Neural Network Model,Neural Network, Computational,Neural Network, Computer,Neural Networks, Computational,Perceptron