Subject: Invited Session on Intelligent Prognostic Methods - cesa98
From: [email-masked] (Ameen Abu-Hanna)
To: Multiple recipients of list <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 18 Jun 1997 15:09:01 +0200

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
               CESA '98 - IEEE/SMC-IMACS, 1 - 4 April 1998
                 (http://lails1.ec-lille.fr/~cesa98/)
                        Nabeul-Hammamet, Tunisia

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

Important Dates:
---------------
Submission deadline:            12 September 1997
Notification of acceptance:     29 September 1997
Conference:                     1 - 4 April  1998

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 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:

o Modelling and Reasoning:
  - ontologies for the specification of medical domain models
  - the specification of prognostic models, possibly as part of 
    diagnostic or therapy-planning applications 
  - representation and reasoning about (multiple) model types such as
    empirical, anatomical and (patho)physiological ones 
  - representation of and reasoning with time
  - qualitative representation and reasoning
  - (dynamic) probabilistic networks
  - decision analytical modelling
  - function-based representation and reasoning
  - case-based representation and reasoning

o Knowledge Acquisition:
  - acquisition of the medical prognostic models
  - automated learning of domain or task models using machine learning 
    techniques 

o Use and Reuse of Prognostic Models in:
  - development of medical guidelines and protocols
  - medical diagnostic systems
  - treatment selection and planning systems

o Formalisation:
  - use of logical, set-theoretical or probabilistic methods to formalise 
    various aspects of prognosis and therapy planning 

o Medical Applications:
  - clinical context of actual prognostic models
  - role of prognostic models in diagnosis or treatment planning of 
    a specific disease 
  - evaluation of prognostic models

TIME SCHEDULE AND PUBLICATION

Submission deadline:            12 September 1997
Notification of acceptance:     29 September 1997
Camera ready version:           15 January 1998
Conference:                     1 - 4 April  1998

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 of "Artificial Intelligence in Medicine"
will be published in mid 1999.

INSTRUCTIONS TO AUTHORS

Contributions, not exceeding 5000 words (about 8-10 pages) 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
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
The programme committee currently consists of:

A. Abu-Hanna, The Netherlands           
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                      Peter Lucas
Dept. of Medical Informatics         Dept. of Computer Science
Academic Medical Center              Utrecht University
University of Amsterdam              Padualaan 14
Meibergdreef 15                      3584 CH Utrecht
1105 AZ Amsterdam                    The Netherlands
The Netherlands
E-mail: [email-masked]       E-mail: [email-masked]
Telephone: +31 20 5664511            Telephone: +31 30 2534094
Fax      : +31 20 6912432            Fax:       +31 30 2513791