DM: Methods of Information in Medicine Special Issue

[Blaz Zupan]

Call for papers

Methods of Information in Medicine
Special Issue on
Applications of Intelligent Data Analysis in Medicine

http://aim.unipv.it/~ric/aidam

Guest editors: Riccardo Bellazzi and Blaz Zupan

BACKGROUND

In all human activities, automatic data collection pushes towards the
development of tools able to handle and analyze data in a
computer-supported fashion. In the majority of the application areas,
this task cannot be accomplished without using the additionally
available knowledge on the domain. This need becomes essential in
biomedical applications, since medical decision making needs to be
supported by arguments based on basic medical and pharmacological
knowledge.

Intelligent data analysis methods support information extraction from
data by potentially exploiting domain knowledge. Most common
techniques include machine learning, temporal data abstraction,
visualization, Bayesian analysis and data mining. To increase the
chances of utilizing these methods within clinical practice, the
intelligent data analysis process typically gains from interaction by
medical experts in all its phases starting from data gathering and
cleaning to evaluation and exploitation of results.

OBJECTIVE OF THE SPECIAL ISSUE

This special issue will address applications of intelligent data
analysis (IDA) in medicine. The objective of the special issue is to
collect papers that show development, adaptation or re-use of existing
IDA methods to cope with a specific medical problem. The ultimate goal
of the issue is to increase the awareness and acceptance of IDA
methods in medical community through papers that show their successful
application. The topics relevant to this special issue include but are
not limited to:

* Applications of IDA methods in a particular medical domain with
  emphases on results obtained and their (potential) impact on the
  medical practice.
* Inclusion of additional domain knowledge (background knowledge) in
  the data analysis process.
* Inclusion of medical experts/physicians in the preparation of data
  for IDA process (e.g., data representation, modeling, cleaning,
  selection, and transformation), as well as in the interpretation and
  exploitation of results.
* Representation of extracted knowledge.
* Visualization of medical data and visualization of results of IDA.
* Treatment of time: applications of IDA in patient monitoring or
  bio-signal processing.
* Integration of IDA tools into the existing medical information
  systems.
* Prospects of applying IDA techniques in medicine. Lessons on how to
  increase the acceptance of these tools by physicians and medical
  experts.

SUBMISSION GUIDELINES

High quality, original papers that deal with real-world problems are
solicited. All the manuscripts submitted will be subject to a rigorous
review process. Submissions of full papers should be limited to at
most 4,000 words, which amounts to about 12-16 pages of 250 words
each, including figures, tables, and references. The papers should
follow the submission guidelines of Methods of Information in
Medicine. Papers must not have appeared in, nor be under consideration
by other journals. Send 4 (four) copies of each submission to the
guest editors listed below (use the address of Riccardo
Bellazzi). Additionally e-mail the title page (authors, affiliations,
abstract, keywords) to ric@aim.unipv.it.

Please note that the final manuscripts of accepted papers should
preferably be no longer than 4 printed pages of Methods of Information
in Medicine, as for each printed page above the number of four (if
required) "Methods" is charging authors with US$ 65. For additional
submission and final manuscript preparation guidelines please refer to
Methods of Information in Medicine or check Special issue's web page
at http://aim.unipv.it/~ric/aidam.

IMPORTANT DATES

October 15, 1999        Full papers received by guest editors
January 15, 2000        Notification of acceptance
April 15, 2000          Final manuscript received
Fall/Winter 2000        Publication of  the special issue

GUEST EDITORS

Riccardo Bellazzi
Dipartimento di Informatica e Sistemistica
Universita di Pavia
Via Ferrata 1, 27100 Pavia, Italy
e-mail: ric@aim.unipv.it

Blaz Zupan
Faculty of Computer Science
University of Ljubljana
Trzaska 25, SI-1000 Ljubljana, Slovenia
e-mail: blaz.zupan@fri.uni-lj.si