DESIGN & DEVELOPMENT OF DIFFERENTIAL DIAGNOSIS SOFTWARE FOR SALIVARY GLANDS DISEASE AND COMPARISON WITH CLINICIAN'S RESULTS

Introduction: Due to increase of population, increasing number of less-experienced dentists more associated information and consequent updates of such information; the need for design of information processing systems to help in better diagnosis of patients with oral disorders becomes more evident. Among other factors, some factors such as age, clinical symptoms, location and shape of lesion could influence the decision to treat salivary gland disorders and determine of their possibility. Up to now, there is no software for differential diagnosis of salivary gland diseases. Objectives: The objective of present study is to design and develop a software so as to help to differential diagnosis of salivary gland diseases and determine the accuracy and effectiveness of its results. Methods: Software based on Bayes' theorem was designed with the help of editor application into which the information of 60 salivary gland diseases was inserted. Then, the information of 40reports of salivary gland diseases was added to the software. In the next stage, the information of the chosen cases given to two expert clinicians so as to develop a differential diagnosis. The result was analyzed using menemar and Wilcoxon test. Results: The results were compared with results of the reports. Almost 60 percent of generated answers by the software and two clinicians included absolute diagnosis of statistically insignificant difference (P-value=0.96). Conclusion: The results showed the acceptable performance of the software. Although the software cannot act instead of a clinician due to the fact that the software user should be quite familiar with salivary gland diseases and methods of examination, this software can be used to help the clinicians in differential diagnosis and training objectives.