Implementation of a knowledge-based decision support system for treatment plan auditing through automation.

Background: Independent auditing is a necessary component of a comprehensive quality assurance (QA) program and can also be utilized for continuous quality improvement (QI) in various radiotherapy processes. Two senior physicists at our institution have been performing a time intensive manual audit of cross-campus treatment plans annually, with the aim of further standardizing our planning procedures, updating policies and guidelines, and providing training opportunities of all staff members.

Purpose: A knowledge-based automated anomaly-detection algorithm to provide decision support and strengthen our manual retrospective plan auditing process was developed.

Vitamin D and interferon-γ co-operate to increase the ACE-2 receptor expression in primary cultures of human thyroid cells.

Background: A more severe course of COVID-19 was associated with low levels of Vitamin D (VitD). Moreover in vitro data showed that VitD up-regulates the mRNA of the Angiotensin Converting Enzyme 2 (ACE-2), the SARS-COV-2 receptor in different type of cells. ACE-2 is expressed in several type of tissues including thyroid cells, on which its mRNA was shown to be up-regulated by interferon-gamma (IFN-γ).

Graph embedded rules for explainable predictions in data streams.

Understanding the reason why a prediction has been made by a machine is crucial to grant trust to a human decision-maker. However, data mining based decision support systems are, in general, not designed to promote interpretability; instead, they are developed to improve accuracy. Interpretability becomes a more challenging issue in the context of data stream mining.