Using a combination of methodologies for improving medical information retrieval performance

This thesis presents three approaches to improve the current state of Medical Information Retrieval. At the time of this writing, the health industry is experiencing a massive change in terms of introducing technology into all aspects of health delivery. The work in this thesis involves adapting existing established concepts in the field of Information Retrieval to the field of Medical Information Retrieval. In particular, we apply subtype filtering, ICD-9 codes, query expansion, and re-ranking methods in order to improve retrieval on medical texts. The first method applies association rule mining and cosine similarity measures. The second method applies subtype filtering and the Apriori algorithm. And the third method uses ICD-9 codes in order to improve retrieval accuracy. Overall, we show that the current state of medical information retrieval has substantial room for improvement. Our first two methods do not show significant improvements, while our third approach shows an improvement of up to 20%

Fuzzy Logic

Fuzzy Logic is becoming an essential method of solving problems in all domains. It gives tremendous impact on the design of autonomous intelligent systems. The purpose of this book is to introduce Hybrid Algorithms, Techniques, and Implementations of Fuzzy Logic. The book consists of thirteen chapters highlighting models and principles of fuzzy logic and issues on its techniques and implementations. The intended readers of this book are engineers, researchers, and graduate students interested in fuzzy logic systems

Agente para recuperación automática de información en diversos entornos basado en técnicas de inteligencia computacional

Falta palabras clavesLa presente tesis se enmarca en la problemática de la recuperación de información, entendiendo por recuperación de información la búsqueda dentro de una colección de documentos diversos, de forma automática, de todos los documentos relacionados, con un cierto grado de relevancia, a partir de una consulta formulada por un usuario. En particular, expone un novedoso sistema, basado en lógica difusa, para la implementación de agentes inteligentes para resolver problemas reales de recuperación de información en diversos entornos. Los métodos de recuperación de información y de asignación de pesos desarrollados dan lugar a las publicaciones que se adjuntan en el compendio de esta tesis; y su aplicación propicia una entrada en la oficina de registro de la propiedad intelectual. En los trabajos de colaboración con empresa relacionados en el Capítulo 5 se han implementado diversos prototipos de agentes inteligentes aplicando las técnicas de inteligencia computacional que sustentan los métodos de recuperación de información desarrollados, con la finalidad de crear agentes inteligentes para resolución de problemas reales en los que se necesita realizar una recuperación de información. Los agentes inteligentes desarrollados utilizan el método de recuperación de información, el método de asignación de pesos, y la estructura de almacenamiento de información desarrollada en las publicaciones que forman el compendio de esta tesis. En dichas publicaciones se justifica el buen funcionamiento de estos métodos, así como la mejora de rendimiento en la recuperación de información contenida en portales web frente al modelo de espacio vectorial (Vector Space Model, VSM) y el método de asignación de pesos tf-idf

Major Total Conversion in English: The Question of Directionality

This research investigates the directionality of major total conversion in English, where major total conversion is defined as the process and at the same time as the result of deriving a new lexical item by altering the part of speech of the base without marking the alteration overtly, as in the presumed pair dry – to dry. The question is whether there is a reliable strategy for deciding which member of a pair is the base and which member is the converted counterpart. Various attempts had been made to resolve the controversial directional issue, but the results have been inconsistent. The investigation aims to discover whether or not there exists a coherent notion about how to decide directionality by considering four factors assumed in the literature to reflect directionality. A large corpus of potential examples of major total conversion was collected to act as test materials. The four factors were compared for each major total conversion pair to see to what extent there was agreement among them. Results showed the factors did not agree to the expected extent. The findings are discussed in detail and it is claimed the inconsistencies can often be explained with recourse to a few general principles. In conclusion, on the whole the four factors considered are consistent with one another. In other words, the notion about how to determine directionality in major total conversion is coherent and can be maintained for English