Neurofuzzy is Useful Aid in Diagnosing Acute Appendicitis

Excerpt

In their recent article in World Journal of Surgery, Prabhudesai and colleagues [1] suggest that the artificial neural networks (ANNs) can be an effective tool for accurately diagnosing appendicitis and may reduce unnecessary appendectomies. We agree with the authors. Nevertheless, ANNs are not without problems. They can be “overtrained” to learn the inherent variation of a sample population and are nonrobust. They do not generalize across the specific problem range of variables for either interpolation or extrapolation. More important than these factors, the network is hidden within a functional “black box.” Thus, it is difficult to gain insight into the model obtained from the data and to ensure that clinical and statistical sense prevails. As a result, statisticians are reluctant to believe in the validity of ANNs. In addition, the weights attached to different variables are uninterpretable, making the interrogation of new variables difficult [2]. Fuzzy logic is the science of reasoning, thinking, and inference, which recognizes and uses the real-world phenomenon that everything is a matter of degree. …