Consistent and complete data and “expert” mining in medicine

The ultimate purpose of many medical data mining systems is to create formalized knowledge for a computer-aided diagnostic system, which can in turn, provide a second diagnostic opinion. Such systems should be consistent and complete as much as possible. The system is consistent if it is free of contradictions (between rules in a computer-aided diagnostic system, rules used by an experienced medical expert and a database of pathologically confirmed cases). The system is complete if it is able to cover (classify) all (or largest possible number of) combinations of the used attributes. A method for discovering a consistent and complete set of diagnostic rules is presented in this chapter. Advantages of the method are shown for development of a breast cancer computer-aided diagnostic system