A genetic algorithm approach to multi-disorder diagnosis

One of the common limitations of expert systems for medical diagnosis is th at they make an implicit assumption that multiple disorders do not co-occur in a single patient. The need for this simplifying assumption stems from t he fact that finding minimal sets of disorders that cover all symptoms for a given patient is generally computationally intractable (NP-hard). In this paper, we explain the need for performing multi-disorder diagnosis, review previous approaches, formulate the problem using set theory notation, and propose the use of a search method based on a genetic algorithm. We test th e algorithm and compare it to another approach using a simple example. The genetic algorithm performs well independently of the order of symptoms, and has the potential to perform multi-disorder diagnosis using existing or ne wly developed knowledge bases. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights re served.