Decision Making for Traditional Chinese Medicine Based on Fuzzy Cognitive Map

Abstract

One fundamental concept in Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) is to consider the human body as a whole, inside which the functions of various body organs are inseparable in terms of mutual coordination as well as the physiological and pathological influences among one another. It is believed in TCM that the human body is also integrated with the living environment through causal relationships. Similar to the basic rationale of TCM, Fuzzy Cognitive Mapping (FCM) is a technique that considers knowledge as a whole. It attempts to simulate normal human reasoning and human decision-making processes. It is thus natural to apply FCM to represent knowledge and experience in TCM treatments. In this paper, we propose to use an FCM-based approach to support decision making for TCM. The approach is evaluated through a case study based on the TCM treatment of common cold. It is clearly shown that the FCM-based approach can provide improvements in the efficiency and precision of decision making for TCM doctors.