CESA'98 -- Call for Papers for the Invited Session on

Intelligent Prognostic Methods in
Medical Diagnosis and Treatment Planning

during
Computational Engineering in Systems Applications '98
(CESA '98) - IEEE/SMC-IMACS, 1 - 4 April 1998
Nabeul-Hammamet, Tunisia

(WWW version of this CFP: http://www.cs.ruu.nl/~lucas/ipm-cesa98.html)

Important dates

Computational prognostic models are increasingly used in medicine to predict the natural course of disease, or the expected outcome after treatment. Prognosis forms an integral part of systems for treatment selection and treatment planning. Furthermore, prognostic models may play an important role in guiding diagnostic problem solving, e.g. by only requesting information concerning tests, of which the outcome affects knowledge of the prognosis.

In recent years several methods and techniques from the fields of artificial intelligence, decision theory and statistics have been introduced into models of the medical management of patients (diagnosis, treatment, follow-up); in some of these models, assessment of the expected prognosis constitutes an integral part. Typically, recent prognostic methods rely on explicit (patho)physiological models, which may be combined with traditional models of life expectancy. Examples of such domain models are causal disease models, and physiological models of regulatory mechanisms in the human body. Such model-based approaches have the potential to facilitate the development of knowledge-based systems, because the medical domain models can be (partially) obtained from the medical literature.

Various methods have been suggested for the representations of such domain models ranging from quantitative and probabilistic approaches to symbolic and qualitative ones. Semantic concepts such as time, e.g. for modelling the progressive changes of regulatory mechanisms, have formed an important and challenging modelling issue. Moreover, automatic learning techniques of such models have been proposed. When model construction is hard, less explicit domain models have been studied such as the use of case-based representations and its combination with more explicit domain models.

This invited session aims at bringing together various theoretical and practical approaches to computational prognosis, possibly in the medical setting of diagnosis and therapy planning, that comprise the state of the art in this field. Papers are sought that describe medical prognosis applications using methods and techniques from artificial intelligence, decision theory, and statistics as well as papers proposing theoretical foundations of such methods. The session will also include one or more invited talks (details will appear in due time on the corresponding WWW-page of this session).

The best papers will entitle their authors to an invitation to submit an extended paper for a special issue on Intelligent Prognostic Methods in Medicine of the journal Artificial Intelligence in Medicine.

Topics of interest

Papers are sought on topics including, but not limited to:

Time schedule and publication

Each submission will be refereed by at least two members of the programme committee. Accepted papers will be published in the proceedings of CESA'98 belonging to the Symposium on Signal Processing and Cybernetics. The special issue on Intelligent Prognostic Methods in Medicine of the journal Artificial Intelligence in Medicine is expected to be published in 1998.

Instructions to authors

Contributions, either extended abstracts (up to 4 pages) or full papers (not exceeding 5000 words, about 8-10 pages including figures and references) are to be addressed to the first co-chair and should be written in English with an abstract and a list of keywords. Electronic submissions by e-mail are encouraged (either postscript files or plain text). Alternatively, 3 paper copies may be submitted. Camera-ready manuscripts should not exceed 6 pages prepared in accordance with CESA's Guide for Authors (a LaTeX style file is available).

Authors planning to submit a paper to the invited session, and hence indirectly to the special issue of the journal Artificial Intelligence in Medicine are requested to contact one of the co-chairs as soon as possible.

Session organization

Co-Chairs:
Ameen Abu-Hanna, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Peter Lucas, Utrecht University, The Netherlands

Programme committee

A. Abu-Hanna, The Netherlands
S. Andreassen, Denmark
L. Console, Italy
G.F. Cooper, USA
J. Fox, UK
P. Hammond, UK
R. Haux, Germany
E. Keravnou, Cyprus
N. Lavrac, Slovenia
P.J.F. Lucas, The Netherlands
M. Musen, USA
M. Ramoni, UK
M. Stefanelli, Italy
J. Wyatt, UK

For more information about the invited session, the conference, or the special issue of the journal Artificial Intelligence in Medicine please contact one of the co-chairs.

Ameen Abu-Hanna
Dept. of Medical Informatics
Academic Medical Center
University of Amsterdam
Meibergdreef 15
1105 AZ Amsterdam
The Netherlands
Telephone: +31 20 5664511
Fax : +31 20 6912432
A.Abu-Hanna@amc.uva.nl
Peter Lucas
Dept. of Computer Science
Utrecht University
Padualaan 14
3584 CH Utrecht
The Netherlands

Telephone: +31 30 2534094
Fax: +31 30 2513791
lucas@cs.ruu.nl