Meta-rules and uncertain reasoning for diagnosis of epilepsy in childhood

This paper presents an expert system which derives differential diagnosis about epilepsy cases in childhood, according to international classifications. This expert system is intended to be used as a consultation system by neurologists. The physician specialist can update the knowledge base of the system through a user-friendly interface. Uncertainty is handled by using weights and certainty factors. Meta-rules drive the reasoning process of the system. The initial evaluation results of the system are very promising, i.e. 83.3% successful diagnosis.