Implementation of an expert system for detection of lymphocyte subsets using KEE

Immunophenotyping is widely used in immunology research as well as clinical diagnosis. Combinations of cluster designation (CD) markers are used to determine the stage of leukemia progression and arrive at a diagnosis. Implementing this process using relational databases with or without temporal extensions is extremely cumbersome. However, using an expert system environment such as the knowledge engineering environment (KEE) for implementing the immunophenotyping process, simplifies data management issues. An expert system model for immunophenotyping has been developed. The system uses CD marker values obtained from flow cytometric analysis in order to characterize cell maturation stages and thereby diagnose the disease state using known facts. This work discusses the implementation of the knowledge base and the diagnosis process involved in it