ARCA-integrated system for cardiac pathologies diagnosis and therapy

ARCA, an integrated system for cardiac pathology diagnosis and therapy, is described. ARCA aims at the development of an autonomous aid system for the treatment of cardiac patients, from the extraction of the ECG to the therapeutic prescription. The kernel of ARCA is a model-based expert system implemented in Prolog and running on a microcomputer. The ARCA knowledge-based subsystem contains a self-knowledge module which helps the chaining of different inference mechanisms and convenient retrieval of detailed knowledge about the domain. The inclusion of this nonprocedural knowledge allows the expert to develop a deep domain model of useful knowledge for ease of user interaction and inference efficiency. Special attention was paid to user interaction through the presentation of various windows