Medicine

Some researchers of the Saint Raphael Institute of Milan have discovered a useful software for the analysis of proteins and very significant in the diagnosis of some pathologies of the immune system. The new program, known as FuzzyLab, concurs to obtain better results and to pull down of 80% the times of examination, to all advantage of the doctor but also of the patient. FuzzyLab is a software neuro-fuzzy, it means that is based on a combination of neural networks and fuzzy logic.


The neural networks are similar to an artificial brain in a position to continuously improving the own ability to learning. Fuzzy logic renders the processes of calculation more flexible. This type of logic is applied already from some year to a lot of products of wide consumption for instance it provides the washing machines of last generation to measure out water and detergent based on the level of stains in laundry. Fuzzylab carries out quickly all the automated job of interpretation of the analyses until today executed manually and entrusted to the interpretation of the doctor.

"In a laboratory of great dimensions" - explains Stefania Del Rosso, the responsible of the Laboraf-Research laboratory of Saint Raphael Institute- "350 analyses are made every day in average, whose reading demands to an expert doctor at least two hours of job. to do the same task the software employs only 20 minutes. In this manner the doctor can distinguish quickly between regular "and pathological outcomes" and dedicate so the saved time to the investigation of examinations more hard to understand ".

The capillary analysis examines proteins of the serum and, beyond providing general indications about inflammatory states and possible hepatic suffering, it is able to reveal the presence of anomalies in the immune system. Is the situation for instance of the monoclonal members - a group of equal antibodies whose onset is correlated to malignant lymphatic pathologies like the skin tumour, the chronic lymphatic leukaemia and the lymphomas.

to learn to read the analyses, FuzzyLab has been subordinate to an difficult training articulated in three moments. In the first phase the software has been instructed to recognize the shape of the regular analytical curves through a mathematical algorithm, on the pedestal of the data supplied from the doctor "trainer". In the second phase have been inserted in the computer the mathematical formulas for the identification of the pathological curves. In the third phase (validation of the system) the manual interpretation and that among FuzzyLab have been put to comparison to estimate of the error margin, resulted inferior to 2%.

The system is extremely flexible and potentially in a position to increasing just the modernization with the experience. "The advantages of this approach are significant both for the doctor and for the patient", says Michelangelo Murone, assistant manager of Laboraf. "The most clear one is the reduction of the times of reporting that provides the analyst to have more time disposition to examine the pathological tracings. The second advantage is the improvement of the interpretative quality, translated in a surer reporting, because the pathological curves are analyzed at least two times, before from the software and so from the doctor, but also more objective and standardized, because Fuzzylab reduces the probability of mistakes and deletes the risk of interpretative differences regarding to the human factor "