A KNOWLEDGE-BASE EXTENSION FOR COMPUTER-A SSISTED INTERPRETATION OF HEPATITIS-B SEROLOGY TEST-RESULTS

The knowledge base of HEPAXPERT-III, a medical expert system for inter pretive analysis of hepatitis A and B serologic findings, contains 16 rules for hepatitis A and 131 rules for hepatitis B serology. By using this knowledge base, each of the total of 64 and 57344 possible serol ogic finding patterns, respectively, of the antigene and antibody test s for hepatitis A and B serology can be interpreted including an analy sis of possible virus exposition, immunity, disease stage, prognosis, and degree of infectiousness. The following tests are included: anti-H AV, IgM-anti-HAV, and HAV in stool - for hepatitis A serology - and HB sAg, anti-HBs, anti-HBc, IgM-anti-HBc, HBeAg, anti-HBe, and anti-HBs t itre - for hepatitis B serology. The complete set of provided IF-THEN rules for the automatic interpretation of hepatitis B serology test re sults is represented in this paper, where an earlier paper on the pred ecessor of the system is referenced extensively to avoid text duplicat ions.