An expert system for the interpretation of full blood counts and blood smears in a hematology laboratory

The Technicon H1 blood cell analyzers are sophisticated instruments that are used in many hematology laboratories throughout the world. The H1 enables a technologist or hematologist to evaluate a patient's blood picture through the interpretation of a combination of numeric results, morphology flags, cytograms and histograms. By combining this information with the visual evaluation of blood smears, a large number of hematologic diseases can be diagnosed. Hematex is an expert system that extracts information from the H1 and then interprets it, as intelligently as a hematologist would, in order to facilitate with the diagnosis of a particular blood disorder. The application possibilities of Hematex are numerous. It not only has potential of becoming a big time-saver in the hematology laboratory, but also has significant educational value. © 1991.