Methods of interpretation of a non-stationary fuzzy system for the treatment of breast cancer

Abstract

Recommending appropriate follow-up treatment options to patients after diagnosis and primary (usually surgical) treatment of breast cancer is a complex decision making problem. Often, the decision is reached by consensus from a multi-disciplinary team of oncologists, radiologists, surgeons and pathologists. Non-stationary fuzzy sets have been proposed as a mechanism to represent and reason with the knowledge of such multiple experts. In this paper, we briefly describe the creation of a non-stationary fuzzy inference system to provide decision support in this context, and examine a number of alternative methods for interpreting the output of such a non-stationary inference system. The alternative interpretation methodologies and the experiments carried out to compare these methods are detailed. Results are presented which shown that using majority voting ensemble decision making from a non-stationary fuzzy system improves accuracy of the decision making. We conclude that non-stationary systems coupled with ensemble interpretation methods are worthy of further exploration.