An Expert System To Determine The Bone Diseases

An expert system named BONNEX to diagnose bone diseases, being one of
artificial intelligence (AI) applications, has been developed in this work. This expert
system is utilizing the expertise from orthopedics and other resources. BONNEX is
used to perform diagnoses based on patient's data, clinical examination data and other
relevant sources in the same way as an expert can do. With the help of the expert
system, the non experts can perform the decision making process in the same wayas the
experts.
BONNEX would make experts' diagnostic capability more widely available in
the clinical community. BONNEX will aid inexperienced orthopedics or general
practitioners working in small medical centers and rural areas to diagnose the nature
and conditions of the bone diseases amongst patients before it can be referred to the
expert doctors and orthopedic who will be normally be available in the big hospitals or
medical centers which are far away from patients' location. It is hoped that with the
early detection of the bone diseases, further and immediate therapies can be taken to
cure the diseases
The elements needed in developing the expert system are user interface,
database, knowledge base, explanation facility and inference engine. The users interact
with the system through a user interface.
The database of the system contains expert-level knowledge on bone diseases
and the information is obtained from interviews with the expert orthopedics and
research from books, websites and journals. After the bone diseases are determined, the
signs and symptoms of the diseases are verified and classified into three categories. The
data is re-arranged into systematic representation. The decision table is prepared for the
system. The decision table is the representation of the findings to ease the expert system
development. It lists out the diseases in one axis and the corresponding symptoms into
another axis.