Knowledge representation in medicine and clinical behavioural science

This book, edited by two well-known scientists in the fuzzy set community, forms a valuable contribution to studies of aspects of knowledge representation in clinical systems. Unlike many technical papers in this area, this volume not only covers particular issues closely related to expert systems but also gives a broader perspective into a variety of methods of processing of clinical, medical, and psychological information. In fact, information gathered in this area has to be treated with great caution owing to its incompleteness, inconsistency, and vagueness. Therefore there is no doubt that the editors got to the crux of the matter of the construction of any knowledge-based system. Success of any edited volume in this area is achieved only when the aspects covered have been carefully investigated by a representative group of researchers. Fortunately, the contributors to this volume have research experience in more than one professional field--in both medicine and computer science, for example. This fact as well as its carefully structured contents make a book of interest to a broad audience of readers. The book is divided into four main parts, each with its own particular character. L Conceptual Problems and Methodological Foundations II. Methodology of Modelling III. Relational Products for Modelling and Analysis IV. Selected Examples of Concrete Applications These cover a broad spectrum of topics viewed at different levels of generality. Part I is devoted to the general methodological requirements imposed on effective schemes of clinical knowledge representation. General problems posed to medical informatics are considered by J. Anderson. Then an aspect of handling incomplete data with different degrees of relevance to individual concepts is discussed by D. Ward, and a process of medical reasoning is investigated by L. Johnson. In a paper presented by V. Pinkava, conceptual, methodological, and logical foundations of classification are discussed in detail.