CONFIDENCE MEASURE IN A DECISION SUPPORT SYSTEM

摘要

The present invention relates to a method for operating a decision support system (DSS) with a Bayesian Network (BN), the Bayesian Network having conditional probabilities (CP) assigned to each node. There is applied a confidence measure (CM) during use of the decision support system (DSS) on a probability of interest (POI) in a node of interest (NOI), wherein the confidence measure (CM) is a measure for the change of the probability of interest (POI) with respect to a change in one conditional probability (CP_i=x). The invention can quite significantly increase the confidence in the proposed decision of the DSS. The DSS can, indirectly or indirectly, utilise one or more confidence measures (CM) as an input to the proposed decisions or tests to be made by the user; e.g., a clinician considering whether or not to make a certain diagnostic test can be informed of the confidence measure (CM) associated with the diagnostic value of the test as calculated from the BN.