Differential diagnosis of dementia in an argumentation framework

Abstract

In order to provide support for differential diagnosis of dementia in medical practice, logical specification of a single clinical guideline is not sufficient. Therefore, a synthesis guideline has been formalized using core features from selected clinical guidelines which report high sensitivity, using conventional two-valued propositional logic. This guideline is sufficient for capturing the major part of typical cases of patients in the domain. However, in order to provide support in atypical cases, additional clinical guidelines are needed in the reasoning process which report higher specificity but are pervaded with more uncertainty. In order to capture the different levels of significance in evidence expressed in the clinical guidelines an argumentation framework based on a many-valued propositional logic is adapted for the domain. This is accomplished in a context of transformations between logics. Formal frameworks will be given as well as a clinical case study where the sets of values that are attached to arguments correspond to the vocabulary used in the clinical guidelines, as well as the functions which compute the significance.