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Abstract
How does a doctor make a diagnosis based on his medical knowledge? A hypothesis is proposed concerning the diagnostic method of specialized doctors. The knowledge provided by an authority is used to establish a diagnostic system for headache and facial pain named RHINOS. RHINOS is based on the above hypothesis as represented by the programming language Prolog, which is operative on an NEC PC-9801 microcomputer with reasonable CPU time. This implementation form benefited greatly from RHINOS's portability and availability.
RHINOS has four types of rules, two levels, acting as a forward link from manifestations to diseases. It also has disease images as a backward link from diseases to manifestations. With this knowledge, RHINOS makes not only a single diagnosis but also differential diagnosis, and diagnosis for complicated cases of two or more diseases. The disease-image link made this possible.
RHINOS was applied for diagnoses of 50 patients: 82% of its answers were equivalent to those made by a specialist, and a further 16% were close to the right answers.