Discovering diagnostic rules from a neurotologic database with genetic algorithms

Data on patients with Meniere's disease, vestibular schwannoma, traumatic v ertigo, sudden deafness, benign paroxysmal positional vertigo, or vestibula r neuritis were retrieved from the database of otoneurologic expert system ONE for the development and testing of a genetic algorithm (GA). The accura cy of the diagnostic rules in solving the test cases was 81%, 91%, 92%, 95% , 96%, and 98% for the respective diseases. The best rules retrieved from t he GA were described by a set of questions with the most likely answers. Th e most important questions concerned the duration of hearing loss and the o ccurrence of head injury, The validity and structure of the rules created w ith a GA can be analyzed in detail. For rare diseases, some other reasoning process can be used, for example, case-based reasoning.