Bu Xusong, Zhang Mingxia, Zhang Zhan, Zhang Qin
Department of Computer Science and Technology, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China.
Otorhinolaryngology Head & Neck Surgery, Xuan Wu Hospital of the Capital Medical University, Beijing 100053, China.
Diagnostics (Basel). 2023 Mar 23;13(7):1219. doi: 10.3390/diagnostics13071219.
The causes of sore throat are complex. It can be caused by diseases of the pharynx, adjacent organs of the pharynx, or even systemic diseases. Therefore, a lack of medical knowledge and experience may cause misdiagnoses or missed diagnoses in sore throat diagnoses, especially for general practitioners in primary hospitals. This study aims to develop a computer-aided diagnostic system to assist clinicians in the differential diagnoses of sore throat. The computer-aided system is developed based on the Dynamic Uncertain Causality Graph (DUCG) theory. We cooperated with medical specialists to establish a sore throat DUCG model as the diagnostic knowledge base. The construction of the model integrates epidemiological data, knowledge, and clinical experience of medical specialists. The chain reasoning algorithm of the DUCG is used for the differential diagnoses of sore throat. The system can diagnose 27 sore throat-related diseases. The model builder initially tests it with 81 cases, and all cases are correctly diagnosed. Then the system is verified by the third-party hospital, and the diagnostic accuracy is 98%. Now, the system has been applied in hundreds of primary hospitals in Jiaozhou City, China, and the degree of recognition for doctors to the diagnostic results of the system is more than 99.9%. It is feasible to use DUCG for the differential diagnoses of sore throat, which can assist primary doctors in clinical diagnoses and the diagnostic results are acceptable to clinicians.
喉咙痛的病因复杂。它可能由咽部疾病、咽部相邻器官疾病甚至全身性疾病引起。因此，医学知识和经验的缺乏可能导致喉咙痛诊断中的误诊或漏诊，尤其是对于基层医院的全科医生而言。本研究旨在开发一种计算机辅助诊断系统，以协助临床医生对喉咙痛进行鉴别诊断。该计算机辅助系统基于动态不确定因果图（DUCG）理论开发。我们与医学专家合作建立了一个喉咙痛DUCG模型作为诊断知识库。该模型的构建整合了流行病学数据、知识以及医学专家的临床经验。DUCG的链式推理算法用于喉咙痛的鉴别诊断。该系统能够诊断27种与喉咙痛相关的疾病。模型构建者最初用81个病例对其进行测试，所有病例均被正确诊断。然后该系统由第三方医院进行验证，诊断准确率为98%。目前，该系统已在中国胶州市的数百所基层医院应用，医生对该系统诊断结果的认可度超过99.9%。使用DUCG进行喉咙痛的鉴别诊断是可行的，它可以协助基层医生进行临床诊断，且诊断结果为临床医生所接受。
