A System for Computer-aided Diagnosis

Abstract

This thesis describes a model diagnostic problem and a computer program designed to deal with this problem. The model diagnostic problem is an abstract problem. A major contention of this thesis, however, is that this problem subsumes the principal feature of a number of ostensibly different real diagnostic problems including certain problems of medical diagnosis and the diagnosis of machine failures. A second major contention of this thesis is that strategies for the solution of the model diagnostic problem can be formulated in terms sufficiently explicit to permit their incorporation in a computer program.