SOME COMMENTS ON LOGICAL ANALYSIS PROCEDURES FOR ROENTGEN DIAGNOSIS

¹ From the Department of Radiology, University of Oregon Medical 5chool and the Oregon Regional Primate Research Center, Beaverton

The current medical scene may be viewed in part as a struggle to organize medical knowledge so that it will be more useful for physicians. Some studies which have as a focus of interest the more effective use of medical data are noted. Investigators have taken a new interest in some of these studies because the availability of computers has encouraged them to seek answers to some old questions.

Bayesian statistics, personal probability, conditional probability and odds-likelihood ratio are discussed briefly. Bayesian statistics has proven to be useful in the study of medical diagnosis. It is, at present, a controversial point of view concerning statistical inference. The three basic ideas are (1) Probabilities are orderly opinion, (2) statistics (or any kind of information processing) is concerned with revision of opinion in the light of new information, and (3) Bayes' theorem of probability theory is a form ally optimal rule about how such revisions should be made.

Some problems in the use of Bayes' theorem are discussed and radiologists are urged to include their personal probabilities for P(S/D) and P(D) in diagnosis discussions in the future.

CiteULike    Complore    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    What's this?