Publication Date
11-1997
Abstract
Chronic pain is a serious health problem affecting millions of people worldwide. Currently, spinal cord simulation is one of the most effective methods of easing the chronic pain. For most patients, a careful selection of weak electric currents enables to drastically decrease the pain level. The first devices offered only a few possible regimes, and it was possible to choose an appropriate regime simply by exhaustive search. Continuous engineering progress leads to more and more flexible devices that offer a wide variety of millions of possible simulation regimes. With this variety, it is no longer possible to test all of them on each patient, we need an intelligent method of choosing an appropriate simulation regime.
In this paper, we describe the design of an expert system for choosing appropriate simulations. We hope that our paper will be understandable both for the computer science readers interested in medical applications, and for medical researchers interested in using computers for pain relief.
Original file: UTEP-CS-97-9
Comments
Technical Report: UTEP-CS-97-9a
Published in the Proceedings of the 4th World Congress on Expert Systems, March 16-20, 1998, Mexico City, Vol. 1, pp. 156-164.