Diagnostic monitoring in anaesthesia using fuzzy trend templates for matching temporal patterns.

A technique based on the concept of a 'fuzzy trend template' has been developed to identify characteristic patterns in multiple time-series. The method has its foundation in fuzzy logic and allows for the intuitive and transparent description of 'templates', which preserve nuances of vagueness, temporal relationships and quantitative descriptors. Evaluation of fuzzy trend templates can provide both belief and plausibility information for use in diagnostic applications. The technique has been applied to the diagnosis of specific problems in anaesthesia and has demonstrated sensitivity and specificity of 95 and 65%, respectively. Evaluation of fuzzy trend templates is, computationally, relatively efficient and has allowed a real-time implementation. The technique has the potential to be useful in any domain that requires temporal pattern recognition based on linguistic rules.