Web-Based Medical Decision Support Systems for Three-Way Medical Decision Making With Game-Theoretic Rough Sets

Abstract

The realization of the Web as a common platform, medium, and interface for supporting human activities has attracted many researchers to the study of Web-based support systems (WSS). An important branch of WSS is Web-based decision support systems that provide intelligent support for making effective decisions in different domains. We focus on decision making in Web-based medical decision support systems (WMDSS). Uncertainty is a critical factor that affects decision making and reasoning in the medical field. A three-way decision-making approach is an effective and better choice to lessen the effects of uncertainty. It provides the provision for delaying certain or definite decisions in situations that lack sufficient evidence or accurate information in reaching certain conclusions. Particularly, the option of deferment decisions is added in this approach that provides the flexibility to further examine and investigate the uncertain and doubtful cases. The game-theoretic rough set (GTRS) model is a recent development in rough sets that can be used to determine the three rough set regions in the probabilistic rough sets framework by determining a pair of thresholds. The three regions are used to obtain three-way decision rules in the form of acceptance, rejection, and deferment rules. In this paper, we extend the GTRS model to analyze uncertainty involved in medical decision making. Experimental results with a GTRS-based approach on different health care datasets suggest that the approach may improve the overall quality of decision making in the medical field, as well as other fields. It is hoped that the incorporation of a GTRS component in WMDSS will enrich and enhance its decision-making capabilities.