Designing and assessment of decision support system (computerized software) in diagnosis of jaw's bony lesions

Correct and on time diagnosis of bony lesions of oral cavity provide the possibility of controlling and proper managing for patient and prevent lesion from reaching more advanced stages. The main purpose of this research was to plan and evaluate a decision support system software in order to diagnose the bony lesions of the jaws. For the designing the software system the information related to lesions based on books and references were collected and algorithms related to each set of lesions were designed. The algorithms were entered to the decision support system software. Gold Standard for evaluating of software system efficiency were different pictures of bony lesions of Wood text book (Differential Diagnosis of Oral and Maxillofacial Lesions). 61 specimens of these lesions with patient’s history, rodiographic features and other necessary information were selected to evaluate the software system efficiency. Three observers including specialist in oral medicine, a general dentist, and a dental student provided their diagnosis first without and second with soft ware system. The data were subjected to t test. The numbers of specimens that have been diagnosed correctly by observer 1, without using software system were 61 and again 61 with using software system. The number of specimen that have been diagnosed correctly by the 2nd observer, without using software system were 17 and 46 with using software system. The 3rd observer diagnosed 34 specimens without using the software and 51 with using the software. Algorithms and designed system were useful and reliable for diagnosing the bony lesions of the jaws.