Decision Support System for Histopathological Diagnosis of Breast Diseases in Women

This paper presents a representation of histological features for histopathological diagnosis of breast diseases in women. Hence, a Decision Support System (DSS) for histopathological interpretation and diagnosis of breast diseases was implemented and evaluated. The Expert knowledge used was elicited through interview and literature search. The needed diagnostic knowledge was represented using diseases' profile in the form of frame. UML, JAVA and MYSQL were used for the design and implementation of the system. 150 samples of retrospective cases were used for the system's implementation, while a Consultant Pathologist's interpretation was used to evaluate the system. Results for Sensitivity, Specificity, Positive Prediction Value and the Negative Prediction Value are 97.7%, 95.0%, 99.2% and 86.3% respectively. Thus, the result showed that the system is capable of assisting an inexperience pathologist in making accurate, consistent and timely diagnoses, also in the study of diagnostic protocol, education, self-assessment, and quality control.