A SYSTEM FOR COMPUTER-AIDED DIAGNOSIS

This thesis describes a model diagnostic problem and a computer program designed to deal with this problem. The model diagnostic problem is an abstract problem. A major contention of this thesis, however, is that this problem subsumes the principal features of a number of ostensibly different real diagnostic problems including certain problems of medical diagnosis and the diagnosis of machine failures. A second major contention of this thesis is that strategies for the solution of the model diagnostic problem can be formulated in terms sufficiently explicit to permit their incorporation in a computer program. The diagnostic program was implemented on the time-sharing system at Project Mac. It was applied to two medical problems, the diagnosis of congenital heart disease, and the diagnosis of primary bone tumors. The results obtained here suggest 1) that a computer program can be of considerable value as a diagnostic tool, and 2) that it is quite advantageous for such a program to perform sequential diagnosis as it interacts with the user.