A Belief Rule Based Expert System to Assess Tuberculosis under Uncertainty.

The primary diagnosis of Tuberculosis (TB) is usually carried out by looking at the various signs and symptoms of a patient. However, these signs and symptoms cannot be measured with 100 % certainty since they are associated with various types of uncertainties such as vagueness, imprecision, randomn...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of Medical Systems Vol. 41; no. 3; pp. 1 - 12
Main Authors: Hossain, Mohammad, Ahmed, Faisal, Fatema-Tuj-Johora, Andersson, Karl
Format: equations & formulas pictorial research tables/charts Journal Article
Published: Springer Nature Mar2017
Online Access:View this record in EBSCOhost
Description
Summary:The primary diagnosis of Tuberculosis (TB) is usually carried out by looking at the various signs and symptoms of a patient. However, these signs and symptoms cannot be measured with 100 % certainty since they are associated with various types of uncertainties such as vagueness, imprecision, randomness, ignorance and incompleteness. Consequently, traditional primary diagnosis, based on these signs and symptoms, which is carried out by the physicians, cannot deliver reliable results. Therefore, this article presents the design, development and applications of a Belief Rule Based Expert System (BRBES) with the ability to handle various types of uncertainties to diagnose TB. The knowledge base of this system is constructed by taking experts' suggestions and by analyzing historical data of TB patients. The experiments, carried out, by taking the data of 100 patients demonstrate that the BRBES's generated results are more reliable than that of human expert as well as fuzzy rule based expert system.