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Description:
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Metanet is a prototype computer program, which was developed to assist in the diagnosis of inborn errors of metabolism in children.
To diagnose new cases, plasma or urinary amino acid results are entered. Then the expert system asks a question of the user regarding the presence or absence of common clinical and/or biochemical abnormalities. Using both the amino acid data and the answers to the questions, the MetaNet program provides a provisional diagnosis. The diagnostic output is accompanied by a numerical “belief vector”, which indicates the degree of confidence of the program in the diagnosis. Altering any of the input variables followed by the reprocessing of the data generates a new diagnostic output and a revised belief vector. This allows analysis of the importance of any input variable to the proposed diagnosis. The expert system also includes a section entitled “Independent Metabolic Disease Reference Documents”, which provides additional information about a suspected metabolic disease when requested by the user. MetaNet promises to be useful both as a model for computer assisted diagnosis of inborn errors and as a research tool.
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