Bisimulation-based Consistency Checking on Syndrome Feng-Shi-Re-Bi in Rheumatoid Arthritis

Abstract

Checking the consistency of knowledge items between textbook and clinical practice is very important for traditional Chinese medicine (TCM). According to the textbook of internal medicine of TCM, rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is a disease with four main syndromes (also called pattern) and Feng-Shi-Re-Bi is a minor one and the associated literature data are not rich. Bisimulation is an equivalence relationship/method in formal methods which can be used to compare the consistency of system's description and its behaviors. In TCM, knowledge items from textbook can be taken as system's description, and knowledge items from clinical practice can be taken as the behaviors of the system. For RA's Feng-Shi-Re-Bi syndrome, employing bisimulation method, the consistency of knowledge items between textbook and clinical practice have been checked. As a result, on Feng-Shi-Re-Bi syndrome, most knowledge items in textbook can be simulated by the clinical practice e.g., syndrome, symptom, herbal formula, herbal medicine. What's more, in clinical practice, there are also variations based on basic rules of traditional Chinese medicine. In brief, bisimulation is a proper method for consistency checking between TCM textbook and clinical practice.