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Computer-based medical consultations: MYCIN
Computer-Based Medical Consultations: MYCIN focuses on MYCIN, a novel computer-based expert system designed to assist physicians with clinical decisions concerning the selection of appropriate therapy for patients with infections. It discusses medical computing, artificial intelligence, and the clinical problem areas for which the MYCIN program is designed, and it describes in detail how the MYCIN program helps physicians in making decisions. Comprised of seven chapters, this volume begins with an overview of MYCIN and the criteria used in its design. The book also explores MYCIN'S ability to answer questions with respect to its knowledge base and the details of a specific consultation, evaluation and future extensions of the MYCIN system, the limitations and accomplishments of MYCIN, and its contributions in artificial intelligence and computer-based medical decision making. This book is a valuable source of information for computer scientists and members of the medical community.
Computer-Based Medical Consultations: MYCIN
This text is a description of a computer-based system designed to assist physicians with clinical decision-making. This system, termed MYCIN, utilizes computer techniques derived principally from the subfield of computer science known as artificial intelligence (AI). MYCIN's task is to assist with the decisions involved in the selection of appropriate therapy for patients with infections.
MYCIN contains considerable medical expertise and is also a novel application of computing technology. Thus, this text is addressed both to members of the medical community, who may have limited computer science backgrounds, and to computer scientists with limited knowledge of medical computing and clinical medicine. Some sections of the text may be of greater interest to one community than to the other. A guide to the text follows so that you may select those portions most pertinent to your particular interests and background.
The complete book in a single file.
Artificial intelligence meets natural stupidity
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Computer-based consultations in clinical therapeutics: Explanation and rule-acquisition capabilities of the MYCIN system
Shortliffe, E.H. | Davis, S. G. | Axline, B. G. | Buchanan, C. C. | Green, S. N.
This report describes progress in the development of an interactive computer program, termed MYCIN, that uses the clinical decision criteria of experts to advise physicans who request advice regarding selection of appropriate antimicrobial therapy for hospital patients with bacterial infections. Since patients with infectious diseases often require therapy before complete information about the organism becomes available, infectious disease experts have identified clinical and historical criteria that aid in the early selection of antimicrobial therapy. MYCIN gives advice in this area by means of three subprograms: (1) A Consultation System that uses information provided by the physician, together with its own knowledge base, to choose an appropriate drug or combination of drugs; (2) An Explanation System that understands simple English questions and answers them in order to justify its decisions or instruct the user; and (3) A Rule Acquisition System that acquires decision criteria during interactions with an expert and codes them for use during future consultation sessions. A variety of human engineering capabilities have been included to heighten the program's acceptability to the physicians who will use it. Early experience indicates that a sample knowledge base of 200 decision criteria can be used by MYCIN to give appropriate advice for many patients with bacteremia.
A new approach to manipulator control: The cerebellar model articulation controller
The cerebellum provides precise coordination of motor control for such body parts as the eyes, arms, fingers, legs, and wings. It stores and retrieves information required to control thousands of muscles in producing coordinated behavior as a function of time. CMAC was designed to provide this kind of motor control for robotic manipulators. CMAC is a kind of memory, or table look-up mechanism, that is capable of learning motor behavior. It exhibits properties such as generalization, learning interference, discrimination, and forgetting that are characteristic of motor learning in biological creatures.