Objects cooperation for clinical tests interpretation

In this paper, the construction of a medical system for clinical tests interpretation is proposed. It is based on a unified formalism: all the domain concepts (biological tests, functional explorations, questionnaire, pathologies, ...) are modeled in terms of objects which are organized in a specialized hierarchy. System objects cooperate in order to detect abnormal test results and resulting pathologies with their level of seriousness. They communicate via a marker-propagating network in which the nodes are terminal objects of the hierarchy. The relationships between nodes express the conditions for propagating the marks. This organization facilitates the system extensibility. The marker-propagating network keeps track of the overall reasoning scheme which the system needs to provide explanations