DOI
10.34229/KCA2522-9664.26.2.16
UDC 004.891.3
L.S. Fainzilberg
Institute for Information Technologies and Systems of the NAS of Ukraine,
Kyiv, Ukraine, 
fainzilberg@gmail.com
INFORMATION ASYMMETRY OF POSITIVE AND NEGATIVE OBSERVATIONS
IN MEDICAL DIAGNOSTICS
Abstract. This paper investigates the informational asymmetry between positive and negative observations of a binary symptom in medical diagnostics. The symptom is modeled as a spatio-temporal binary field. By considering independent observations, an analytical expression is derived for the critical number of negative observations at which the information contributed by a single positive observation becomes equivalent to that of the corresponding number of negative ones. Similar formulas are obtained using homogeneous and non-homogeneous first-order Markov chains. Numerical examples demonstrate that accounting for temporal dependence and the direction of state dynamics, such as disease progression or recoveryhas a significant impact on the critical number of observations. The results provide a mathematical basis for recommendations on the required scope of medical examinations and may also be applied to other decision tasks.
Keywords: medical diagnostics, spatio-temporal field, binary feature, informativeness, positive and negative observation.
full text
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