Detailing test characteristics for probabilistic networks

Abstract

In the medical domain, establishing a diagnosis typically amounts to reasoning about the unobservable truth, based upon a set of indirect observations from diagnostic tests. A diagnostic test may not be perfectly reliable, however. To avoid misdiagnosis, therefore, the reliability characteristics of the test should be taken into account upon reasoning. In this paper, we address the issue of modelling such characteristics in a probabilistic network.We argue that the standard reliability characteristics that are generally available from the literature have to be further detailed, for example by experts, before they can be included in a network. We illustrate this and related modelling issues by means of a real-life probabilistic network in oncology. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2003.