The representation of medical reasoning models in resolution-based theorem provers

Abstract

First-order predicate logic essentially is a language to express knowledge concerning objects and relationships between objects in a domain. Many medical problems can be cast naturally in such terms. In this paper the suitability of logic as a knowledge-representation formalism for building medical expert systems is investigated. In particular, we investigate the logical representation of three typical reasoning models in medicine: diagnostic, anatomical and causal reasoning. It turns out that each of these models has its own characteristic logical structure. Furthermore, the pragmatics of using theorem-proving techniques in consulting such logic-based medical expert systems is discussed. In particular, attention is paid to the use of a meta-level architecture to improve the applicability of theorem-proving techniques in building expert systems.