Call for Papers
Artificial Intelligence in Medicine
Special Issue on
Qualitative Reasoning Techniques and Applications in Medicine
Guest Editor:
Liliana Ironi (Istituto di Analisi Numerica -CNR,Pavia - Italy)
BACKGROUND
The prediction of the evolution over time of the patient's state plays a
crucial role in medical tasks such as diagnosis, therapy planning, monitoring.
A traditional way to approach such a problem deals with both the formulation
of mathematical models of the dynamics of patho-physiological systems and
the simulation of their behaviour. But, in the medical domain, classical
model formulation may not be successfully applicable due to the incompleteness
of the available knowledge as well as quantitative results may not be
appropriate for the task in hand. A valuable and promising alternative
to conventional modeling and simulation frameworks is provided by qualitative
methods, that enable us to deal with incompletely specified systems. Clearly,
the qualitative prediction does not contain precise information about the
exact evolution of the single patient's state, as given in a quantitative
representation, but provides for different several possible trajectories
consistent with the knowledge we actually have about the different
patho-physiological hypotheses. The integration of both qualitative and
quantitative approaches should allow us in the near future to construct
tools which automate a broad spectrum of the medical reasoning skills that
are exhibited by the human experts when performing a task.
OBJECTIVE
This special issue will address current techniques and applications of
Qualitative Reasoning (QR) in Medicine. Methodological papers describe
either useful extensions or novel methods particularly suited for medical
applications; whereas, papers whose emphasis is on application describe
implementation and validation of prototype systems, based on QR techniques,
for diagnosis, monitoring, therapy planning, and overall patient management.
Some of the topics relevant to this special issue on QR in Medicine are:
- QR techniques, particularly suited for medical applications.
- Criteria for selecting and evaluating QR techniques or set of techniques
for medical applications.
- Integration of QR techniques with conventional ones, providing a
motivation for the medical domain, as well as management of different
knowledge sources.
- Interpretation of massive data streams coming from the latest generation
medical equipments
- Knowledge acquisition (e.g., model building tools and techniques, automated
model construction, learning from data).
- Generation of causal explanations for intelligent user-interfaces.
- Integration of QR techniques into medical KBS.
- Application of QR techniques for developing and understanding complex
patho-physiological theories in a specific medical domain.
SCHEDULE
February 25, 1998 Submission of tentative title and abstract to declare
intention to submit a paper
(sent by e-mail to the guest editor)
May 25, 1998 Receipt of full papers by the guest editor
September 20,1998 Notification of acceptance
December 15, 1998 Receipt of final-version of manuscripts
August 1999 Publication of AIM Special Issue
SUBMISSION GUIDELINES
All the manuscripts submitted will be subject to a rigorous review process.
Submissions of full papers should be limited to at most 30 pages including
figures, tables, and references. The text should be in 12pt font,
1.5 line-spacing (at most 15,000 words), leaving a 3 cm (1.2 inches) margin
at each side. You may also use submission guidelines provided by the
publisher. Papers must not have appeared in, nor be under consideration by
other journals. Papers should start with a title page that includes title,
authors and their affiliation, abstract of about 100 words, up to 5 keywords,
and the information on the contact author (full address, phone and fax number,
e-mail address). Send four copies of each submission to the guest editor.
The title page should also be submitted by e-mail to the guest editor
according to the schedule.
GUEST EDITOR
Liliana Ironi
Istituto di Analisi Numerica (IAN-CNR)
via Abbiategrasso 209
27100 PAVIA (ITALY)
Phone: (39) 382 - 529600
Fax: (39) 382 - 529566
e-mail: ironi@dragon.ian.pv.cnr.it
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