A neuro-fuzzy decision support system for the diagnosis of heart failure.

A neuro-fuzzy decision support system is proposed for the diagnosis of heart failure. The system comprises; knowledge base (database, neural networks and fuzzy logic) of both the quantitative and qualitative knowledge of the diagnosis of heart failure, neuro-fuzzy inference engine and decision support engine. The neural networks employ a multi-layers perception back propagation learning process while the fuzzy logic uses the root sum square inference procedure. The neuro-fuzzy inference engine uses a weighted average of the premise and consequent parameters with the fuzzy rules serving as the nodes and the fuzzy sets representing the weights of the nodes. The decision support engine carries out the cognitive and emotional filtering of the objective and subjective feelings of the medical practitioner. An experimental study of the decision support system was carried out using cases of some patients from three hospitals in Nigeria with the assistance of their medical personnel who collected patients' data over a period of six months. The results of the study show that the neuro-fuzzy system provides a highly reliable diagnosis, while the emotional and cognitive filters further refine the diagnosis results by taking care of the contextual elements of medical diagnosis.