Assignment 3: Knowledge-Based Systems using CLIPS (Due November 10, 2008)

1. The assignment is to write a CLIPS medical diagnostic expert system that is capable of diagnosing one of the following medical situations:

HIV:

- sore_throat

- headache

- fever

- rash

Pregnancy

- fatigue

- vomiting

- light_headedness

- increased_waistline

Flu

- headache

- fever

- tiredness

- nasal_discharge

Your system should function correctly even if the user inputs a synonym of one of the symptoms. Here is a list of the synonyms that your system should recognize:

fever: elevated_temperature, hyperthermia, pyrexia

headache: pain_head, migraine

sore_throat: pain_throat, throat_sore

fatigue: exhaustion, lethargy, tiredness, weariness

vomiting: emesis, stomach_upset, upset_stomach, nausea

passed_out: fainting, light_headedness, syncope, vasovagal

A typical example run would assert the facts:

(assert
(check Peter) (migraine) (pyrexia) (fatigue) (nasal_discharge))

and then run your knowledge base and expect the system to respond by printing:

Peter has/is flu.

You should include the following rule to print the output:

 
(defrule conclusion "Prints out the
results of running the KB"
 (check ?who)
 (medical_cond ?med)
 =>
 
(printout t ?who " has/is " ?med "." crlf))
 

2. After you are done with implementing the above expert system, try the following:

 
(assert
(check
Peter) (headache) (vomiting) (light_headedness)
(increased_waistline))
 

Your system will respond by saying: "Peter has/is pregnant." Even if Peter has all these symptoms, obviously he cannot be pregnant. What do you need to add to your expert system to avoid this problem? (No need to actually modify your system. Just write down your answer and submit it with your assignment.)

Restrictions:

• You may use a maximum of four predicates in the LHS of any rule.
• It is the patient given in the check fact that you must check his/her medical situation. There may be extra facts thrown in the working memory to confuse your program.

Please submit a ReadMe file to tell how to run your program.

References:

1. http://health.allrefer.com/health/symptoms.html
2. Herod, J.M. and Bahili, A.T. "Ameliorating the Pregnant Man Problem: A Verification Tool for Personal Computer Based Expert System." Int. J. Man-Machine Studies 1991.

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Questions provided by Nagi Basha.